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THREE-MILE CROSS (MISS MITFORD'S HOUSE). 



CHILD-LIFE AND GIRLHOOD 



Remarkable Women 




OGRAPHY 



BY 



W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & CO 
31 WEST TWENTY THIRD ST. 
1895 






By Transfer 
22 1W 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS . 

Harriet Martineau — Fanny Burney — Elizabeth Inchbald — 
Charlotte Bronte— Sara' iSoleridge — Mrs. Somerville — 
Mary Russell Mitford**Lady Morgan 



CHAPTER II. 

THE TWELVE DAYS' QUEEN. — A PURITAN LADY . 1 27 

Lady Jane Grey — Mrs. Hutchinson. 

CHAPTER III. 

SOME NOTABLE ENGLISHWOMEN . . . - 1 59 

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke — Margaret More- 
Mary Granville — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 



vi CONTENTS. 

TAGH 

CHAPTER IV. 

SOME MINOR LITERARY LIGHTS . . . 207 

Katharine Philips — Lsetitia Pilkington — Elizabeth Rowe. 

CHAPTER V. 

SAINTLY LIVES: TWO ENTHUSIASTS . • 221 

Catharine of Siena — Jeanne d'Arc. 

CHAPTER VI. 

A GROUP OF EXEMPLARY CHARACTERS . - . 26 1 

Madame de Miramion — Elizabeth Carter — Caroline Herschel 
— Madame Pape-Carpantier — Mrs. Fry — Lady Fan- 
shawe— Mrs. Godolphin. 

CHAPTER VII. 
THREE ILLUSTRIOUS FRENCHWOMEN . . .298 

Madame Roland — Madame Michelet — Eugenie de Guerin. 



Cpir-fife ai §tmm\\Mt Womni 



CHAPTER I. 

ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS. 

HARRIET MARTINEAU. FANNY BURNEY. ELIZABETH 

INCHBALD. CHARLOTTE BRONTE. SARA COLERIDGE. 

— MRS. SOMERVII.LE — MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. — 
LADY MORGAN. 

Harriet Martineau. 

IF the old adage be true that " the boy makes the 
man," the converse, I suppose, must also be true, 
that the girl makes the woman. For my own part, I 
am inclined to think that there is greater truth in the 
latter form of the saying than in the former ; the girl, 
as she grows up, being less exposed to those external 
influences which shape and mould the character than 
the boy. Her development takes place within the secure 
shelter of the family circle, and she seldom cornes into 
contact with the world until she has reached woman- 
hood ; when she goes out to meet the stress and strain 
of daily life with her character matured and "set." It 



CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



is a common remark, that at eighteen a maiden is for 
the most part a finished woman, with all a woman's 
readiness of resource, quickness of judgment, and capa- 
city of self-control ; whereas, at that age, the majority of 
lads are very young men indeed, " raw," wayward, and 
" boyish." I have known many boys whose after careers 
have wholly falsified the prognostications founded on 
the experiences of their boyhood : the meek and gentle 
scholar of Rugby has hardened mysteriously into the 
brilliant Anglo-Indian trooper, always foremost in tne 
desperate charge ; the dull apathetic lad, at the bottom 
of his " form," constantly suffering the infliction of "re- 
petitions " for carelessly prepared or forgotten lessons, 
has ripened into the astute special pleader or alert civil, 
engineer. But I have always found the promise of 
girlhood fulfilled ; I have always found the woman 
what the " girl " foreshadowed she would be — what the 
influences to which as a girl she was subjected, and 
the training which as a girl she underwent, very clearly 
indicated what she would of necessity become. 

For though there may be differences of opinion as to 
the range and force of woman's intellect in comparison 
with that of man, all, I suppose, will agree that it is 
more plastic, more easily affected by the conditions under 
which it expands. Most, teachers will acknowledge that 
girls are more easily taught than boys ; their receptive- 
ness is greater, and their perceptiveness is quicker. 
They learn and retain more readily, and therefore they 
are more readily led in any particular direction. Because 



HARRIET MARTINEAU 



tliey are less exposed to the indurating action of the 
world, they are necessarily softer and more ductile, 
more amenable to the wise caution and the prudent 
warning, more easily moved by an appeal to their 
affections. But, if this be the case, what a responsibility 
rests upon their parents and teachers ! How important 
it is that these yielding and impressionable natures should 
be carefully shielded from everything that might warp 
or sully or degrade them. The judgment has to be 
formed, the intellect disciplined ; the passions have to 
be controlled, and the feelings moderated. In a word, 
there is a mind to be cultivated, a heart to be brought 
under subjection, a soul to be purified and strengthened. 
When the soil is prepared for the reception of the germs 
of future growth, the utmost vigilance is needed lest 
seed of thorn or thistle should be wilfully and perniciously 
sown. It is deeply to be regretted that so little care, 
as a rule, is exercised over the education and training 
of our girls ; and for want of this wise supervision and 
loving watchiulness we see society infested by thought- 
less and insincere women, who lower the social standard 
and discredit and dishonour their own sex. Hence it is 
that we meet so often with the commonplace maiden, 
without ideas or aspirations, moral or mental energy, 
who loiters through life as if it had neither duties nor 
responsibilities; with the flirt who devotes herself to 
frivolous dissipation ; the gossip, who spends her hours 
in collecting and retailing the inanities of tea-table talk ; 
and with other unpleasant types, the products of modern 



io CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

society, which have neither earnestness nor truth, no 
high purpose in life, and no sense of the dignity of 
womanhood. 

In the Southern Highlands of Scotland, (as I have 
elsewhere written,*) lies a well-known scene, famous in 
legend, song, and story, where, standing on a narrow 
isthmus, the traveller sees behind him a small mountain 
loch, and in front a larger basin of shining waters, 
which stretches away towards the valley of the Tweed, 
and pours into it its tribute through the channel of the 
poetic Yarrow. I have stood there on an early summer 
morning, when over the larger lake has brooded a 
luminous mist, rendering all its outlines shadowy and 
uncertain, while behind me the crystal mere has been 
as distinctly denned in every feature as if it had been 
moulded by some master-hand. And I have seen in 
the double picture an image of maidenhood, which 
seems to connect, like an isthmus, the two periods of 
girlhood and womanhood. To the young heart how 
vague and how vast appears that future on the threshold 
of which it momentarily pauses in mingled fear and 
hope ! — how limited and how clearly marked that past 
which it is for ever leaving ! Longfellow, in some well- 
known verses,! has described the maiden as 

" Standing, with reluctant feet, 
Where the brook and river meet, 
Womanhood and childhood fleet ! 



* "Woman's W f ork and Worth," p. 90* 

f Longfellow, Miscellaneous Foems :" Maidenhood." 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



" Gazing, with a timid glance, 
On the brooklet's swift advance, 
On the river's broad expanse ! " 

Assuredly, there is no stage of woman's career which 
brings with it such a burden of disturbing emotions, 
anxieties, aspirations, alarms, and wishes ; there is no 
stage of graver interest or more serious importance. 
What her life is to become, whether it is to be nobly 
used or idly wasted or painfully sacrificed, — whether it 
is to send up to heaven a sweet savour and incense of 
duty fulfilled, or whether it is to present a dreary 
record of responsibilities neglected, — depends upon the 
preparation and equipment which the maiden has re- 
ceived and acquired in girlhood. Unhappily, too often 
she is called upon to face the trials of womanhood 
without any such • preparation. The opportunities of her 
girlhood have been turned to no account. That vast, 
dim Future on which her eyes look out so wistfully is 
all the vaster and dimmer from her absolute ignorance 
of its obligations, its possibilities, its dangers, and its 
pleasures. She is sent forward into the battle of life, 
an untrained recruit. In too many cases her parents, 
or others interested in her, have made no effort 
to ascertain the tendencies of her mind, the scope 
of her talents, the nature of her tastes, the strength 
or weakness of her character : even her mother is 
too frequently content to leave her to grope her way 
as best she can in the twilight, and to discover for 
herself, after many mistakes and much suffering, the 



CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



path in life that is best fitted to the measure of her 
capabilities. 

It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the value of Bio- 
graphy. From the lives of those who have gone before 
us it enables us to deduce lessons for our own guidance ; 
shows us how we may profit by what they have accom- 
plished and endured, what we may learn from their 
failures as well as their successes. The educational uses 
of Biography are, I think, not sufficiently appreciated. 
We read to be amused, to be interested, but not to 
be taught. Yet the most commonplace life of the most 
commonplace man would have in it something of high 
utility — a warning or an encouragement, a reproof or a 
consolation — if it were rightly studied ; and of much 
greater importance must be the lives of those who have 
done great deeds or uttered great thoughts, who have 
achieved much or suffered much. As they lie unfolded 
before us, they may be made useful in strengthening 
our nobler purposes, purifying our motives, elevating our 
aims, sustaining us under our disappointments. It is a 
mere truism to speak of the life of Palissy as a com- 
mentary on the advantages of perseverance, or of the life 
of George Stephenson as an illustration of successful 
industry. There is much more to be learned from real 
lives than these every-day and most obvious truths. 
The beauty of sympathy and kindly feeling, the strength 
that rests in a consciousness of right-doing, the refining 
effect of exalted aspirations, the victories won by serenity 
of temper and self-control, the true genius which consists 



HARRIET MAR TINE AU. 



in the ready adaptation of means to an end, — all this we 
may gather from the records of good and great lives. 
Christianity itself is founded upon a biography ; its basis 
and support is the life of Christ. Therefore, in preparing 
themselves for the duties and cares, the joys and sorrows 
of womanhood, our girls should find in Biography an 
ever-present help. Necessarily, the lives of good and 
great women will possess a more direct interest and 
value for them than those of great and good men — 
though the latter must not be ignored — because whether 
we do or do not admit the general equality of the two 
sexes, we cannot deny their intellectual separateness. 
Two things may be equal and yet not alike : for myself, 
I cannot decide between the rose and the violet ; both 
are perfect of their kind, as God hath made them, but 
both are different. Men and women are not alike, in 
themselves any more than in their duties ; and in the 
first place, therefore, our girls must study the biographies 
of good women, the women who have shown what may 
be done to ennoble and elevate womanhood. These 
must be their charts, in which they may discover the 
sunken reef and the whirling current, the wilderness 
and the desert, as well as the sunny breadths of azure 
sea and the happy isles. 

In the following pages we have drawn upon Bio- 
graphy for the purpose of showing what some great and 
good Women were as Girls ; how far the promise of 
their girlhood blossomed into performance ; to what 
extent their later lives were affected by the influences 



14 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

which presided over their early years ; and why and how 
they became the women which Biography represents 
them to have been. For the reader who thinks as she 
reads; these passages will possess not only a profound 
interest but a great practical value. She will see how 
the Won) an naturally develops and grows out of the 
Girl, — how Womanhood is the positive and inevitable 
reflection of Girlhood ; and she will feel that what she 
may and will be, depends upon what she is. 

One of the ablest of literary Englishwomen is Harriet 
Martineau.* Her books are marvels of cleverness ; she 
knew how to make political economy interesting, and to 
clothe with the attractions of fiction the pages of the 
statute book. She had a quick eye for the weak point 
of an argument, and in controversy hit quickly and hit 
sharply. Her clearness of statement was not less 
remarkable than her graphic force of description. In 
all her books the lustre of her intellect is obvious 
enough, but then it is a metallic lustre. They never 
stir the emotions, never awaken one's tenderness or 
hope or sympathy. They are so hard and so cold ! 
Perhaps this is due in no slight degree to her stupendous 
egotism. Never was there a woman who had so firm a 
belief in herself, who was so strongly convinced that all 

* Born 1802, died 1876. Author of " Deerbrook," "The Hour 
and the Man," " The Play-fellow," " Feats on the Fiord," " Forest 
and Game Law Tales," " The Rioters," "Retrospect of Western 
Travel," "Eastern Life, Past and Present," "Life in the Sick 
Room," " History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace," etc. 



HARRIET MA R TINE A U. 15 



who differed from her must necessarily be in the wrong. 
She could see everybody's faults and failings but her own. 
This, it is true, is not an uncommon example of lucidity; 
but in Harriet Martineau it reached colossal proportions. 
The best defence that has been made for her has been 
made, I believe, by Mr. W. R. Greg. He thinks that, 
considering her extraordinary powers, her consciousness 
of abounding energy, the suddenness and completeness 
of her success, and the fame and adulation with which 
she was surrounded in times of great excitement and 
amid circles of dazzling brilliancy, her self-confidence, 
however regrettable, was not only natural, but its absence 
would have been miraculous. "The truth is," he adds, 
" that doubt seems to have been a state of mind unknown 
to her. She never reconsidered her opinions, or mused 
over her judgments. They were instantaneous insights, 
not deliberate or gradual deductions. It scarcely seemed 
to occur to her that she could be wrong • that thousands 
of eminent or wise men differed from her never appeared 
to suggest the probability." Still, this ingenious defence 
can hardly be accepted as satisfactory. An egotism so 
absorbing was an intellectual no less than a moral defect. 
And it is true of Miss Martineau, that in spite of her vast 
energy, her great capacity for work, and her mental force 
and vigour, she was undoubtedly wanting in the higher 
genius. There was talent, enough and to spare, — brisk, 
active, fertile, vehement talent — but nothing more. We 
cannot conceive of such aggressive self-confidence as an 
accompaniment and a limi-ation of the genius of Shake- 



16 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

speare, or Newton, or Goethe ; for the self-confidence of 
Harriet Martineau took away from the merit of every 
person but herself, resolved the world into a something 
existing for the display of her own individuality, and was 
as ready to blot God out of heaven as to depose Satan 
from the throne of hell. 

But she w r as not wanting only in the modesty and 
calmness which are the characteristics of the higher 
genius as indisputably as light and warmth are the cha- 
racteristics of summer : she had no sympathy. She had 
none of that exquisite tenderness and sympathetic power 
which we find in the greater minds. She could no more 
have created a Cordelia and a Desdemona than she could 
have fashioned a Hamlet or a King Lear. It was a 
narrow circle within which her fancy worked. Even 
in her domestic novel ol " Deerbrook," there is an entire 
want of true domestic feeling ; she writes like an observer, 
from the outside ; she has held no share or part in it 
herself; and for this reason she never exercises any 
command over the emotions of her readers, — is as 
powerless to move them to tears as to excite them to 
laughter. The icy glitter of her style chills and repels ; 
but it is a true reflection of the cold clearness of her 
thoughts. 

Let us now see if her defects are in any way accounted 
for by the training and experiences of her early life. 

Harriet Martineau was the daughter of a respectable 
Norwich manufacturer, who, though of Huguenot lineage, 
was an Unitarian in his religious creed. From the 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 17 

records which have come down to us we can gather no 
very distinct conception of what manner of man he was ; 
but we know that her mother was a woman of great 
cleverness, very restless, very dogmatic, and very secure 
in her own wisdom.. Harriet Martineau was not happy in 
her parents, who seem to have been singularly unfortu- 
nate in their mode of managing children. They never 
tried to understand her ; they did little to guide her ; 
they made no attempt to cultivate her affections. She 
tells us that in her childhood she was only twice treated 
with any degree of tenderness : once when her parents 
were moved out of their ordinary indifference by her 
sufferings from earache; once when a kindly-natured lady 
took pity upon her alarm at a magic-lantern exhibition. 
So loveless a childhood will explain, I think, much that 
was hard and frigid in her womanhood. 

She was the sixth of a family of eight ; but though one 
of the youngest, was selected to enjoy the special benefit 
of the severest maternal discipline. An almost morbid 
sensitiveness was a source of great suffering ; but no one 
seems to have recognized it, and certainly no one allowed 
for it. She gives it as her opinion that her parents never 
had the slightest idea of her miseries ; but after all some 
excuse is to be found for them in the fact that she never 
confided in them, and of self-created agonies they could 
hardly be expected to have had much knowledge. She 
describes her sudden accesses of fear as really unaccount- 
able : they had their origin, no doubt, in her excessive 
self-concentration. "A magic-lantern," she says, "was 



iS CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

exhibited to us on Christmas Day, and once or twice in 
the year besides. I used to see it cleaned by daylight, 
and to handle all its parts, understanding its whole struc- 
ture ; yet, such was my terror of the white circle on the 
wall, and of the moving slides, that, to speak the plain 
truth, the first apparition always brought on bowel com- 
plaint ; and at the age of thirteen, when I was pretending 
to take care of little children during the exhibition, 1 
could never look at it without having the back of a chair 
to grasp, or hurting myself, to carry off the intolerable 
sensation." It is clear that a child of so impressionable a 
temperament needed the tenderest, most careful, and most 
delicate management, and a discipline which, while firm, 
should have been subtly adapted to her idiosyncracies. 

Of the actual mental education of the little Martineaus 
the greatest care seems to have been taken. If the 
making of them excellent housewives and needlewomen, 
fine musicians, and tolerable French scholars, were the 
aim and object of their parents, that aim and object 
must be held to have been attained. They were sent 
to a good school, and acquired a sufficient knowledge of 
Latin to make sonorous hexameters, as so many can do, 
and even to think in Latin, which so few are able to do. 
Harriet's master was a man of some ability, and had 
discernment enough to recognise the good promise of 
his quaint, Clever, and deaf little pupil. Her literary ten- 
dencies first developed themselves in her love of reading; 
and, like all who really love reading, she read omnivo- 
rously, though with a preference for history, poetry, and, 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



strange to say, policies. She says of herself that her 
mind was desperately methodical ; and no doubt to this 
passion for method her rapid progress must be attributed. 
The facts and ideas she acquired were immediately 
" sorted," so to speak, and put away on different shelves 
of her memory for future use. They were not heaped 
upon one another, — rudis indigestaque moles ; — crushing 
and keeping down with their weight the reflective powers. 
But even a good thing may be abused, and latterly 
Miss Martineau carried her systematizing processes to an 
extreme. Everything that would admit of it she tabulated, 
like columns of pounds, shillings, and pence. On one 
occasion she adopted Dr. Franklin's youthful and absurd 
plan of arranging his day's virtues and vices under heads. 
" I found at once," she says, " the difficulty of mapping 
out moral qualities, and had to give it up, — as I presume 
he had too. But I tried after something quite as foolish, 
and with immense perseverance. I thought it would be 
a fine thing to distribute Scripture instructions under the 
heads of the virtues and vices, so as to have encourage- 
ment or rebuke always ready at hand. So I made (as 
on so many other occasions) a paper book, ruled and 
duly headed. With the Old Testament I got on very 
well ; but I was annoyed at the difficulty with the New. 
I knew it to be of so much more value and importance 
than the Old, that I could not account for the small 
number of cut and dry commands. I twisted meanings 
and wordings, and made figurative things into precepts, 
before I would give up ; but after rivalling any old 



20 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Puritan preacher in my free use of Scripture, I was 
obliged to own that I could not construct the system I 
wanted." 

To a mind so keenly apprehensive and so restless, 
religious truth necessarily became an object of early 
interest. Bred up in the cold atmosphere of Unitarianism, 
she groped her way painfully towards the light, but 
her egotism prevented her from finding it. Nothing 
would serve but that she must have a creed of her own. 
She could not be contented with the " idea" of Christ's 
religion which the New Testament embodies, but con- 
structed a Christianity without Christ. The creed of 
her girlhood was a thing of shreds and patches, some- 
thing to this effect : She believed in a God who, in her 
opinion, was milder and more beneficent and passionless 
th^n the God of " the orthodox," inasmuch as He would 
not doom any of His creatures to everlasting torment. 
She did not at any time believe in the Devil, but regarded 
him as an allegorical personification of Sin, while she 
thought eternal punishment stood for eternal detriment. 
She believed in eternal and inestimable rewards of holiness, 
though she says of herself that she never did a right thing 
or abstained from a wrong one through any consideration 
of loss or gain. To the best of her recollection, she 
always feared sin and remorse extremely, but punishment 
not at all. A mental analysis made in mature woman- 
hood may err, however, on many points of childish 
thought and belief. But it is not impossible that, as she 
says, the doctrine of repentance and forgiveness never 



HARRIET MAR TINEA U. 



availed her much. Probably it was presented to her 
more as a doctrinal dogma, as an article of the theo- 
logical system, than as a living truth. Forgiveness for 
the past was as nothing to her, because it did not seem 
to involve safety in the future; and she felt that her 
sins could not be blotted out by any single remission of 
their consequences, even if such a remission were pos- 
sible. Hence it appears that while she had constructed 
for herself a Deity much milder and more beneficent — 
in her modest opinion — than the God of the Christian 
believer, she did not love Him sufficiently to desire His 
praise or dread His anger. To a large extent she seems 
to have borrowed her religious ideas at first from " Para- 
dise Lost " and "The Pilgrim's Progress." Afterwards 
they were modified by the conclusions which she drew 
with hasty self-sufficiency from all kinds of premisses 
and assumptions. Thus, she speaks of a time when she 
satisfied herself that the dogmas of the resurrection of 
the body and the immortality of the soul could not both 
be true ; but why the one should be incompatible with 
the other she does not enlighten us. She adhered to the 
former, she says, after St. Paul : which would seem to 
imply on her part a strange conviction that St. Paul does 
not teach the soul's everlasting life ! 

While we condemn her arrogance of speculation, we 
must in justice own that she struggled after light. She 
prayed "night and morning" until she came to mature 
age ; but unhappily she had not been taught to address 
herself to a personal Saviour, and in the name of Jesus 



22 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Christ to lay her petitions and her perplexities before 
" the great white throne." What warmth and beauty 
might have been poured into her daily life had she but 
realised the truth, the central truth of Christianity, that 
Jesus the Son of Man was also the Son of God, and that 
it was He who reconciled man to God by His sacrifice 
on the cross ! She studied the Bible continuously and 
most earnestly ; both by daily reading of chapters, after 
"the approved but mischievous method," and by close 
consultation of all the commentaries and expositions on 
which she could lay her hands. She procured the works 
of Dugald Stewart, Hartley, and Priestley ; ventured 
boldly into the maze of metaphysics, and spent weary 
hours on the insoluble problems of foreknowledge and free- 
will. But not having hold of that clue which lies in the 
Divinity of Christ, she wandered astray in barren tracks 
of thought, until she ultimately became a Necessarian, and 
accepted as a cardinal truth the invariable and inflexible 
action of fixed laws. The effect upon her theological 
system was immediate and immense. She alighted upon 
the astounding discovery that the practice of prayer, as 
prevailing throughout Christendom, was wholly unautho- 
rised by the New Testament. How she arrived at this 
"discovery " she does not tell us, and in the face of the 
commands to " watch and pray " and to " pray without 
ceasing," we are unable to guess. At all times, how- 
ever, she must have had a very vague conception of the 
meaning and spirit of Christian prayer, which she seems 
to have identified with the Pharisaic prayers reprobated 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



23 



by the Saviour ! We need not be surprised that, after 
such a discovery, she changed her method. 

" Not knowing what was good for me, and being sure 
that every external thing would come to pass just the 
same, whether I liked it or not, I ceased to desire, and 
therefore to pray for, anything external — whether ' daily 
bread ' [which Christ Himself has taught us to pray 
for], or health, or life for myself or others, or anything 
whatever but spiritual good. There I for a long time 
drew the line. Many years after I had outgrown the 
childishness of wishing for I knew not what — of 
praying for what might either be good or evil — I con- 
tinued to pray for spiritual benefits. I can hardly say 
for spiritual aid ; for I took the necessarian view of 
even the higher form of prayer, — that it brought about, 
or might bring about, its own accomplishment by the 
spiritual dispositions which it excited and cherished. 
This view is so far from simple, and so irreconcilable 
with the view of a revelation of a scheme of salvation, 
that it is clear that the one or the other view must soon 
give way." 

Unhappily, in Harriet Martineau's case both views gave 
way, owing, I fear, to the arrogance of spirit in which 
she approached religious subjects. It was not with the 
humility of childhood that she knelt before her Lord, — 
not as one conscious of sin and imploring forgiveness ; 
but rather with all the pride of a sceptical intellect, and 
as one who refused to believe whatever that intellect 
dismissed as unworthy of belief. There is, I confess 



24 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

something very painful to me in Harriet Martin eau's 
candid revelation of that child-life of hers, from which 
the child-spirit was ever absent ; that loveless and un- 
loving girlhood, so self-concentrated, so self-reliant, and 
so coldly speculative, with its want of light and warmth, 
of reverence and faith ! It sufficiently explains all that 
was hard and cold in her womanhood, and furnishes a 
key to the enigmas of her life and character. 

How strangely she failed to understand the meaning 
and spirit of Christian prayer and praise, and how sadly 
absorbing was that egotism which grew with her growth 
and developed with her development until she was 
completely its slave, may be inferred from the following 
passage : — 

" What I could not desire for myself," she says, " I 
could not think of stipulating for for others ; and thus, 
in regard to petition, my prayers became simply an 
aspiration, — ' Thy will be done ! ' But still, the depart- 
ment of praise remained. I need hardly say that I soon 
drew back in shame from offering to a Divine Being 
a homage which would be offensive to an earthly one ; 
and when this practice was over, my devotions consisted 
in aspiration, — very frequent and heartfelt, — under all 
circumstances and influences, and much as I meditate 
now, almost hourly, on the mysteries of life and the 
universe, and the great science and art of human duty. 
In proportion as the taint of fear and desire and self- 
regard fell off, and the meditation had fact instead of 
passion for its subject, the aspiration became freer and 



HARRIET MARTIN EAU, 25 

sweeter, till at length, when the selfish superstition had 
wholly gone out of it, it spread its charm through every 
change of every waking hour, — and does now, when 
life itself is expiring." A " selfish superstition " is surely 
not the term which! a woman like Harriet Martineau 
should have applied to the fond secret hope that thou- 
sands of minds not less gifted — many, indeed, more 
richly gifted — than her own, have thankfully cherished, 
and have found a lamp for their feet in life and a stay 
and support in the presence of the dark valley. But 
one great flaw vitiates fatally her whole argument. No 
analogy can with justice be attempted between the God 
and Father of the Christian's creed, and a feeble, erring, 
earthly sovereign ; or between the devout and loving 
worship offered at the altar of the Divine, and the 
flattery or adulation heaped at the feet of the Human. 
And further, Miss Martineau loses sight of the great 
truth that the heart is purified and made better by 
indulging in admiration of all that is great and good. 
Prayer and praise are a part of the education of the soul. 
We may allow ourselves, I think, to conceive of 
Harriet Martineau as yearning and aspiring after a lofty 
ideal amid the failings and egotisms of her girlhood ; as 
endeavouring to find a substitute and compensation for 
the mother-love which seems to have been denied to 
her in venturesome speculations and visionary reflec- 
tions. As she grew older, and grew stronger both in 
mind and body, it was natural enough that she should 
grow bolder, and that aspiration should be replaced by 



26 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

self-satisfied conviction. The morbid self-reproach of her 
earlier years gave way to an extravagant self-conscious- 
ness, and thenceforth she soared into an empyrean of 
her own, high above the faiths and hopes of the many, 
reposing in the same dignity of a passionless intellect. 

She had passed out of her girlhood before she gave to 
the world her first book, a little volume of " Devotional 
Exercises," which appeared in 1823, when she was 
twenty-one years old. 

In the eloquent lines which Mr. Matthew Arnold has 
dedicated to her memory, he rightly speaks of her as a 
" steadfast soul which, unflinching and keen, wrought to 
erase from its depth, mist and illusion and fear ; " but 
in so doing, unhappily, she threw aside the tenderest 
and truest consolations humanity has ever known. He 
continues : — 

" Myrtle and rose fit the young, 
Laurel and oak the mature, 
Private affections for those 
Have run their circle and left 
Space for things far from themselves, 
Thoughts of the general weal, 
County and public cares : 
Public cares which move 
Seldom and faintly the depth 
Of younger passionate souls, 
Plunged in themselves, who demand 
Only to live by the heart, 
Only to love and be loved." 

Well, there is a beau;y of its own in a life spent in 
loving and being loved, and such a life may haply prove 



FANNY BURNEY. 27 

more useful to the world in its unpretending humility 
than a life busied in " thoughts of the general weal, 
county, and public cares." It is a good thing to be 
loved : it is a good thing to love, if our love be given to 
a noble object. The " primal duties " — the duties we 
owe to our parents and our children, our neighbours and 
our friends — are duties that cannot be neglected without 
injury to the general weal, while in their fulfilment lies 
the individual gain. It was the misfortune of Harriet 
Martineau's girlhood that it failed to educate her into 
an appreciation of those duties ; that it did nothing to 
cultivate her affections ; and that if any secret sources of 
tenderness and love lay in her heart, it froze them up. 

Fanny Burney. 

At Lynn Regis, where her father then officiated as 
organist of the parish church, Frances or Fanny Burney 
was born, in the summer of 1752." She was the second 
daughter, and a shy, grave, demure little lassie, with an 
'nfinite talent for listening and observing. Her father, 
Dr. Burney, was an accomplished musician, and a man 
of considerable ability : Fanny inherited the ability, but 
not the love of or skill in music. Her quiet and re- 
served manners — a demeanour wholly beyond her years — 

* Fanny Burney, born 1752, died 1840. Wrote the novels 
of "Evelina" (1778), "Cecilia" (1782), "Camilla" (1796), and 
"The Wanderer" (1814). Her clever, lively "Diary" was pub- 
lished in 1846. She also wrote "Memoirs of Dr. Charles Burney," 
her father, in 1832. 



28 CHILD-L1I-E OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

procured for her from the Doctor's friends the sobriquet 
of "the old lady." They little thought what a fund of 
humour and sense of the ridiculous lay concealed 
beneath that old-ladyish exterior ; or how acutely she 
read their characters, and wrote off, as it were, in her 
memory their idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. Her 
father tells us that, after going to the theatre, she would 
imitate all the actors, and compose speeches to suit their 
different characters, when she was still too young to read 
them ; but this mimetic gift she kept for the amusement 
of herself or her family, — she was much too timid to 
display it in the social circle. Her talents, indeed, do 
not seem to have been very generously appreciated. 
She was called " the little dunce," and as at eight years 
old she did not know her letters, a terrible " dunce " she 
doubtlessly appeared in the eyes of those who knew 
nothing of the silent education she was undergoing. 
While her father talked history and poetry and music 
with his friends, Fanny sat, listened, and remembered. 
And so, too, while with her older sister Hester her mother 
read Pope's works and Mr. Christopher Pitt's sonorous 
translation of the ^Eneid, Fanny sat and listened, and 
committed to heart the passages which her sister recited. 
But her education would not have gone far in any 
direction, had not Dr. Burney, in 1760, removed from 
the placid monotony of provincial life to the stir and 
stress and abounding activity of London. There he 
took up his abode in Poland Street, then a neighbour- 
hood of some pretension ; afterwards, in St. Martin's 



FANNY BURNEY, 



29 



Street, in the house formerly occupied by the illustrious 
Newton. In the year following his removal to London, 
he lost his wife, — a great blow to Fanny, who was capable 
of the strongest and deepest affection. There was some 
talk for a time of sending her to live with her maternal 
grandmother, of whom the child was passionately fond ; 
but she was a Catholic, and lived in France, and Dr. 
Burney decided that he would not risk the perversion 
of his daughter's religious principles. He kept her at 
home, therefore ; but as he was a busy man, and also a 
sociable man, he had very little time to give to the 
cultivation of her mind, and she was relegated to that 
work of self-education which she had unconsciously 
begun at Lynn Regis. Self-education has one special 
merit, it is generally comprehensive ; but it has also a 
special defect, it is generally shallow. The novels by 
which Fanny Burney is remembered owe their excel- 
lences and their failings to this comprehensiveness and 
this shallowness. Their sketches of human character 
are singularly varied, but their views of human life are 
anything but profound. Superficial peculiarities she 
notes with caustic accuracy, but into the motives and 
the inner feelings she is unable to penetrate. She is 
what she is as a writer, because she was what she was as 
a girl. 

One could wish that her father had devoted some 
leisure to developing the fine abilities of his daughter, 
but one cannot altogether blame him. He worked hard 
as a teacher of music : his day began at seven in the 



io CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

morning, and frequently did not end until eleven at 
night. So arduous were his labours that he often dined 
in the hackney coach which carried him from one pupil 
to another, and for this purpose always carried with him 
a tin box of sandwiches and a flask of wine and water. 
Whether as a father he would not have acted more 
conscientiously in curtailing some of his engagements so 
as to have given a little thought and a little care to the 
moral and intellectual development of his child, I need 
not now inquire ; what is certain is, that he left her to 
her own devices. She scrambled at length into a know- 
ledge of reading ; but, until one of her sisters returned 
from school at Paris, she was unable to write. The 
mastery of this accomplishment proved a great boon ; 
for as soon as she could write she began to compose, 
thus reaching another stage of intellectual growth. Her 
quick prolific fancy poured out little poems and tales 
fancies which she committed to paper in characters 
decipherable only by herself. This exercise accustomed 
her to think, and to arrange her thoughts in order ; it 
familiarised her also with the art of expression. Admitted 
at all times to her father's table, she listened with eager- 
ness to the conversation that rippled and eddied around 
it ; and there was much in it to stimulate her intel- 
lectual powers and educe her literary tendencies. For 
Dr. Burney, as a man of cultivated tastes and agreeable 
manners, had been welcomed into the most distinguished 
literary circles. At Lynn he had secured the good 
opinion of Dr. Johnson by the zeal with which he 



FANNY BURNEY. 



3< 



had always and everywhere eulogised the "English 
Dictionary " ; and the acquaintance being renewed and 
confirmed in London, the moralist and the musician not 
unfrequently prolonged their winter-night symposia until 
the candles had burned down in their sockets and the 
last spark died out of the empty grate. 

Dr. Burney's social circle included Nollekens, the 
sculptor, a man who could say shrewd things sharply ; 
Dr. Armstrong, a wit as well as a physician, and a 
" poet " ; Arthur Young, still remembered as an authority 
upon agricultural questions ; Mrs. Greville, an accom- 
plished woman of fashion, whose " Ode to Indifference " 
is written with easy elegance ; Mason, the poet, drama- 
tist, and friend of Gray ; Sir Robert Strange, the en- 
graver, and his laughter-loving wife ; Dr. Hawkesworth, 
the essayist and industrious litterateur ; Mr. Crisp, a 
gentleman by birth and breeding, who was constant in 
his friendship for the Burney family ; and the graceful, 
attractive, and versatile Garrick, the " Crichton " of the 
the English stage. The last-named was not the least 
welcome ; for while his witty sallies and apt anecdotes 
delighted the older members of the brilliant circle, his 
powers of mimicry infinitely amused the younger. 

Fanny Burney's keen eye found here a wide field 
of observation. But that her opportunities of studying 
human character might be multiplied, the house in 
St. Martin's Street, over which in due time a second 
Mrs. Burney presided, became the rendezvous of the 
musical world of London. To adopt Lord Macaulay's 

3 



32 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

ornate phraseology, — the greatest Italian singers who 
visited England regarded Dr. Burney as the dispenser 
of fame in their art, and used their utmost efforts to 
obtain his suffrages. Hence he was able, at a very 
slight expenditure, to give concerts of the highest ex- 
cellence. His musical reunions were all " the rage," 
and attracted peers and peeresses, statesmen, fine gentle- 
men, and finer ladies, as well as the lions of the hour. 
Thither came James Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, fresh 
from the sources of the Blue Nile; and Omai, the 
gentle Tahitian, whom Captain Cook had brought from 
his Eden-isle ; and Cowper, celebrated for tuneful verse. 
On one of these occasions, — probably a fair specimen 
of the rest, — Bumey's little drawing-room contrived to 
accommodate Lord Sandwich, the " Jemmy Twitcher " of 
the " Beggar's Opera," * and the lover of the unfortunate 
Miss Ray ; Lord and Lady Mount Edgcumbe, Lord Ash- 
burnham, and Lord Mulgrave, — all of whom belonged to 
the cognoscenti, and "had a taste." But the great show of 
the night, says Macaulay, was the Russian ambassador, 

* John, Earl of Sandwich, was a notorious profligate, though he 
frequently assumed the cloak of excessive piety. So Gay says of 
him : — 

"When sly Jemmy Twitcher had smugged up his face, 
With a lick of Court whitewash and pious grimace." 

The Earl had been a boon companion of Wilkes, but turned against 
him to secure the favour of the Court. Soon afterwards, The 
Beggar's Opera was acted at Covent Garden ; and when Macheath 
uttered the words — "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I own 
surprised me," they were immediately applied to Lord Sandwich, 
who thenceforth was universally known as " Jemmy Twitcher." 



FANNY BURNEY. 33 

Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all ablaze with 
jewels, and whose Scythian ferocity was but partially 
concealed by a thin varnish of French politeness. As 
he stalked about the small apartment, almost brushing 
the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each 
other, with mingled admiration and horror, " that he 
was the favoured lover of his august mistress ; that he 
had borne the chief part in the rev olution t o which she 
owed her throne ; and that 
with diamond rings, had 
windpipe of her unfortun; 

When Fanny was ab( 
who had been educated in' 
of them, Susannah, has 
Hester and Fanny. She speaks of the former as gay, 
lively, and witty ; to the latter she attributes sense, sen- 
sibility, and bashfulness, even to prudery. The demure 
demeanour of her childhood had not given way under 
the genial influence of her father's drawing-room con- 
versations. She was as practical, as prudent, as matter- 
of-fact at fifteen as she had been at ten, — to which early 
age belongs the following anecdote : — 

Her sisters and herself played frequently with the 
children of a " hair merchant," their neighbour in Poland 
Street. A garden at the back of the house was the 
playground ; and wigs were the playthings. One of 
these, valued at ten guineas, fell into a tub of water and 
was ruined. Whereat the hair-merchant, not unnaturally? 
was exceedingly angered. " What," cried Fanny, after 




34 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

listening to him awhile, " what signifies talking so much 
about an accident ? The wig is wet, to be sure ; and 
the wig was a good wig, to be sure ; but 'tis of no use 
to speak of it any more, because whafs done cant be 
undone." 

Stimulated by the atmosphere which surrounded her, 
Fanny Burney persevered in her literary efforts. The 
shy girl of sixteen, who never opened her lips " in 
company," was carefully noting the characteristics of 
the motley throng around her, — its Broughtons, its 
Belfields, its Meadowsts, Evelinas, and Cecilias, — and 
already making use of them in efforts at fictitious narra- 
tive. In London her " study " was a little play-room 
up two pair of stairs, which sheltered the toys of two 
younger children. During the annual migrations of the 
family to Lynn, she sought refuge in a summer-house 
called "the cabin," and there, in secret, poured into 
the favoured ears of her sister Susannah the premature 
productions of her quick and observant intellect. 

Novel-writing in those days was not considered a fit 
occupation for young ladies. They might translate 
Epictetus, like Elizabeth Carter, or scribble dull verse, 
like Anna Seward ('-the Swan of Lichfield!"), but to 
dabble in fiction was to violate the bienseances of society. 
I suppose it was the coarse flavour of Aphra Behn's 
indecent romances which rankled in the nostrils of our 
forefathers. Fanny Burney was solicitous, therefore, 
to keep her pastime from her mother-in-law's vigilant 
eye. She felt a " fearful joy " in the guilty practice ; 



FANNY BURNEY. 35 

but at length it became known, and she was subjected to 
a severe reprimand and a moral lecture. She had too 
much good feeling to resent the reprimand, and too 
much good sense to be influenced by the lecture ; but 
her sense of duty prompted obedience to her mother's 
arbitrary commands. So she collected all her precious 
compositions, and in the presence of her lamenting 
sister Susannah committed them to the flames. What 
were her feelings during this sacrificial ceremony she 
has failed to record. 

To occupy her leisure she now plied her needle with 
laborious assiduity, and stitched and hemmed irom 
morn til] dewy eve. The activity of her invention, 
however, would not be repressed. She endeavoured 
to satisfy herself by keeping a diary, but in vain. You 
cannot expel nature even by a mother-in-law ! Among 
the devoted MSS. which had been offered up at the 
altar of duty was the "History of Caroline Evelyn;'' 
and in spite of herself her vagrant fancy luxuriated in 
the conception of the perplexing circumstances in which 
it was possible to involve her heroine, whom she chose 
to consider as highly connected on the father's side but 
linked to vulgarity on the mother's, and thus exposed 
to antagonistic influences. The conception was original 
and striking, and obviously lent itself to much ingenious 
development. Placed on the frontier-line, so to speak, 
of two worlds, or, like Mahomet's coffin, suspended be- 
tween the aristocratic heaven and the plebeian earth, 
the motherless beauty would necessarily come into 



36 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

contact with a vast variety of character-types: the 
well-born father, the rude fop, the handsome hero, 
the Scotch poet, lean as his own rugged hills, the aged 
coquette, the vulgar citizens of Snow Hill. These Miss 
Burney proceeded to draw with truth, because she drew 
from the life ; and finally, after composing the whole 
in her memory, an irresistible impulse forced her to 
commit to paper the story of "Evelina: or a Young 
Lady's Entrance into the World." 

Here Fanny's girlhood must be considered as at an 
end, though she could not, I suppose, have been more 
than seventeen. But the author of " Evelina " was, to 
all intents and purposes, a woman ; a woman in know- 
ledge of the world, in insight into character, in the 
detection of human follies and weaknesses. It is 
necessary that we should follow the fortunes of her 
literary enterprise a little farther. At first its progress 
was slow; for her father, who was then collecting his 
materials for his " History of Music," made large demands 
upon her time and labour. In the summer of 1770, 
while he was absent on a Continental tour, she obtained 
a happy leisure for her own studies and compositions ; 
but, on his return in the spring of 1771, she was again 
employed as his principal amanuensis in preparing for 
the press a narrative of his travels. Shortly afterwards 
he set out on another tour of musical research in Ger- 
many and the Low Countries. Meantime, the family 
resided at Lynn and at Chesington, where Fanny gradually 
worked up into a harmonious whole the disjecta membra 



FANNY BC7RNEY. ^ 

of her story. But it was not until 1776, after the pub- 
lication of the paternal magnum opus, that she found 
opportunities of giving to " Evelina " the finishing touches. 
She was then seized with " an odd inclination to see it 
in print," — an " odd inclination " which most educated 
people experience at least once in their lives, — and 
laboriously transcribing the all-important manuscript in 
a feigned hand, she sent it for publication to Dodsley, 
the once celebrated bookseller. He, however, refused to> 
look at anything anonymous ; and her brother Charles, 
who had been entrusted with the secret, then betook 
himself to a publisher named Lowndes, in Fleet Street. 

Lowndes read the book, and expressed his willingness 
to publish it; but at this juncture Fanny's filial scruples 
suddenly revived, and she shrank from completing thtt 
transaction without her father's consent. Seizing an 
auspicious occasion, she informed him, blushing like a nun 
when confessing her first fault, that she had written a book, 
— that she desired his permission to issue it anonymously, 
but that she could not show him the manuscript. His 
surprise at this avowal was surpassed by his amusement. 
So hearty was his laughter that Fanny's fears and em- 
barrassment vanished instantly, and she joined in his 
merriment. He pronounced the plan as innocent as it 
was whimsical; and advising her to be careful in pre- 
serving her anonymity, passed from the subject, without 
asking even the title of her book. Macaulay bestows 
a good deal of dignified censure on what he considers 
to have been Dr. Burney's reprehensible carelessness. 



38 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

He thinks that on so serious an occasion it was the 
father's duty to have given the best advice he could 
to his clever daughter ; to have prevented her from 
publishing the book if, on examination, he had found 
it a bad one, and if it had proved a good one to have 
seen that she obtained for it an adequate remuneration. 
All this is very grave and very true, but it is evident that 
Dr Burney regarded the matter as a joke, and had no 
idea that the demure Fanny had written a book which 
was to make her famous, and to be read by thousands 
long after his own productions had been consigned to 
the lumber-corner of dusty libraries. He evidently 
dismissed from his mind all thought of Fanny's nascent 
authorship. So the bargain was concluded with Mr. 
Lowndes, — a good one for him, and a bad one for 
Fanny ; but in agreements between authors and publishers 
it is not the latter who generally suffer, — and in January 
1778 " Evelina" made her appearance before the world. 

" This year," writes Fanny in her Diary, " was ushered 
in by a grand and most important event. At the latter 
end of January the literary world was favoured with the 
first publication of the ingenious, learned, and most 
profound Fanny Burney ! I doubt not but this memo- 
rable affair will, in future times, mark the period whence 
chronologers will date the zenith of the polite arts in 
this island ! 

" This admirable authoress has named her most 
elaborate performance ' Evelina : or a Young Lady's 
Entrance into the World.' 



FANNY BURNEY. 39 

" Perhaps this may seem rather a bold attempt and 
title for a female whose knowledge of the world is very 
confined, and whose inclinations, as well as situation, 
incline her to a private and domestic life. All I can 
urge is, that I have only presumed to trace the accidents 
and adventures to which a ' young woman ' is liable : 
I have not pretended to show the world what it generally 
is, but what it appears to a girl of seventeen; and so 
far as that, surely any girl who is past seventeen may 
safely do. The motto of my excuse shall be taken from 
Pope's * Essay on Criticism ' : — 

" ' In every work regard the writer's end ; 
Since none can compass more than they intend.' " 

Miss Barney was not exempt from the uneasy and 
anxious feelings which always attend the neophyte's first 
appearance before the public. She dreaded the slings 
and arrows of criticism ; and when her success on this 
point reassured her, she shrank nervously from the 
publicity in which her literary enterprise had involved 
her. " I have an exceeding odd sensation," she writes, 
" when I consider that it is now in the power of any 
and every body to read what I so carefully hoarded even 
from my best friends, till this last month or two ; and 
that a work which was so lately lodged, in all privacy, 
in my bureau, may now be seen by every butcher and 
baker, cobbler and tinker, throughout the three kingdoms, 
for the small tribute of threepence." 

At first the reception given to " Evelina " was languid. 



40 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

The publisher was not a man of much influence ; the 
book was not recommended by any well-known name ; 
to the veteran novel-reader the subject promised little 
of interest or excitement ; while by large sections of the 
public all works of fiction were condemned as injurious 
or, at the best, unprofitable. But by slow degrees its 
merits attracted the discerning few, who hastened to 
make known their opinion to a wider circle. And at 
last it began to be rumoured that something altogether 
new and fresh awaited the perusal of the judicious reader. 
Mrs. Thrale, then at the zenith of her social influence, 
read it with delight, and pronounced it far superior 
(Heaven save the mark !) to Madame Riccoborie's tales. 
She recommended it to Dr. Johnson, and when the 
literary Rhadamanthus had read it, he too declared 
warmly in its favour. "Why, madam," he exclaimed, 
" what a charming book you lent me ! " and he added 
that passages in it would do honour to Richardson, 
and that Fielding never drew such a character as " Mr. 
Smith." The demand at the circulating libraries — which 
no Mudie as yet had arisen to reform — was incessant. 
The publisher's shop was crowded with purchasers, all 
eager to know the name of the author. The Lo?idon 
Review, and afterwards the Monthly, confirmed the suc- 
cess of " Evelina " by their solemn critical approval. 

The secret of the authorship was well preserved. 
Some persons ascribed it to Christopher Anstey, the 
author of " The New Bath Guide " ; others whispered 
that Horace Walpole could tell all about it. Sir Joshua 



FANNY BURNEY. 41 



Reynolds, who had put aside his palette and easel to 
read this wonderful new novel, protested he would give 
fifty pounds to know the author. Not less curious was 
Edmund Burke, who having begun to read it one evening 
at seven, sat up all night to finish it. Amid this gentle 
flutter of enthusiasm, Dr. Burney went to call upon Mrs. 
Thrale at Streatham. A record of the conversation is 
preserved by Miss Burney: — 

" He took the opportunity, when they were together, 
of saying that upon her recommendation he had himself, 
as well as my mother, been reading ' Evelina.' 

"'Well,' cried she, 'and is it not a very pretty book, 
and a very clever book, and a very comical book ? ' 

"'Why,' answered he, "tis well enough; but I have 
something to tell you about it.' 

" ' Well ? what ? ' cried she ; ' has Mrs. Cholmondely 
found out the author ? ' 

"'No,' returned he, 'not that I know of; but / 
believe that /have, though but very lately.' 

" ' Well, pray let's hear ! ' cried she, eagerly ; ' I want 
to know him of all things.' 

" How my father must have laughed at the him ! 
He then, however, undeceived her in regard to that 
particular by telling her it was * our Fanny I* for she 
knows all about our family; as my father talks to her 
of his domestic concerns without any reserve. 

'• A hundred handsome things, of course, followed ; 
and she afterwards read some of the comic parts to Dr. 
Johnson, Mr. Thrale, and whoever came near her. How 



42 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



I should have quivered had I been there ! but they tell 
me that Dr. Johnson laughed as heartily as my father 
himself did." 

What Mrs. Thrale knew was soon known to all the 
world ; and great was the surprise when it was found 
that the novel which had won so great and such 
deserved applause for its vivid sketches of character and 
its keen analysis of human follies, was the work of Dr. 
Burney's demure and silent young daughter. The sen- 
sation produced has been almost equalled in our own 
times by that which arose on the discovery of the author- 
ship of " Jane Eyre." Only now-a-days the world has 
so much to talk about. The daily papers supply it with 
a succession of fresh topics, and this week engages its 
interest in revolutions in Madagascar, next week in 
cometary disturbances and magnetic storms. To-day's 
wonder treads on the heels of yesterday's, and in its 
turn will be pushed aside by to-morrow's. A century ago 
the case was different. It took a week — a fortnight — a 
month, for a piece of news to obtain general diffusion. 
People had time to discuss it in every shape ; to take it 
up again and again; to gather the opinion of their neigh- 
bours upon it ; to make it the subject of the coffee-house 
chat or the drawing-room conversation. Thus it came 
to pass that " Evelina " and its author for a long time 
remained the curiosity and admiration of the town; and 
that Fanny Burney had leisure not only to taste of the 
delights of fame, but thoroughly to enjoy them. There 
was no risk of her speedy supercession by a new favourite, 



FANNY BURNEY, 43 



And now what are we to say of the book that in the 
days when George the Third was king so flurried and 
fevered the little great men and women and the great 
little men and women of London society? Primarily, 
that it is exactly the book in tone and style which 
one might have expected from Fanny Burney with her 
peculiar girlhood experiences. It is a vulgar book, and 
she was bred in a vulgar atmosphere ; and an ungenial 
book, and there was nothing to develop any geniality 
in her. It is crowded with commonplace characters, 
such as she had known and studied ; and reflects the 
low, dull, dreary life of mean aims and small objects 
which she saw lived around her. It makes no appeal 
to our higher thoughts or better feelings ; says nothing 
which can strike a single passionate chord in our hearts. 
If it had contained a single flash of insight into the 
mysteries of life — a single recognition of all that is 
inscrutable and unintelligible in human fortune and 
human destiny — a single touch of deep and true emotion 
— it would have been to this day a living book, instead 
of a " standard fiction " which men criticize but do not 
read. 

At the time the story opens, Evelina, the heroine, is 
seventeen, — beautiful exceedingly, not less amiable 
than beautiful, and, as might be expected of a young 
lady in her " teens," thoughtless and imprudent. She has 
been educated by a Mr. Viilars, the clergyman who had 
officiated at her mother's marriage ; this mother being a 
giri of low birth whose beauty had fascinated a man of 



44 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

rank, who had experienced the pains and sorrows of an 
unequal marriage, and had died of a broken heart Her 
father, Sir John Belmont, she knows only by name ; she 
herself is called Miss Danville. Visiting London for the 
first time, in charge of Mrs. Mirvan, the mother of her 
friend Maria, she is recognized by her maternal grand- 
mother, Madame Duval, who takes forcible possession 
of her. 

Through Madame Duval, Evelina makes the acquaint- 
ance of a commonplace plebeian family, the Broughtons, 
silversmiths, of Snow Hill, Holborn ; and is thus involved 
in a succession of scenes which illustrate, in a manner 
then quite new to English fiction, the follies of vulgar 
wealth and ignorant ostentation. Her sensibilities are 
grievously shocked by the coarseness of her new-found 
relatives, whom in her letters to her friends she sketches 
with all the force and bitterness suggested by outraged 
tastes and feelings. 

" Mr. Broughton," she writes, " appears to be about 
forty years of age. He does not seem to want a 
common understanding, though he is very contracted 
and prejudiced ; he has spent his whole time in the 
city, and I believe feels a great contempt for all who 
reside elsewhere. 

"His son seems weaker in his understanding, and 
more gay in his temper; but his gaiety is that of a 
foolish, overgrown schoolboy, whose mirth consists in 
noise and disturbance. He disdains his father for his 
close attention to business and love of money, though 



FANNY BURNEY. 4S 



he seems himself to have no talent, spirit, or generosity 
to make him superior to either. His chief delight ap- 
pears to be tormenting and ridiculing his sisters ; who, 
in return, most heartily despise him. 

"Miss Broughton, the eldest daughter, is by no 
means ugly; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and con- 
ceited. She hates the city, though without knowing 
why; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere 
else. Miss Polly Broughton is rather pretty, very 
ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, very good-natured." 

The two Miss Broughtons are drawn with genuine 
power ; every touch tells, and they are evidently drawn 
from the life. Their innate coarseness, their vulgarity — 
a vulgarity of mind as of manner, — and their want of 
feeling, which is an usual concomitant of want of 
breeding, are skilfully contrasted with the delicacy and 
refinement of Evelina. When they learn that on one 
occasion she has danced with Lord Orville, — the heru 
of the story, — the elder one exclaims : " Lord, Polly, 
only think — Miss has danced with a lord ! " And Polly 
replies : " Well, that's a thing I should never have 
thought of ! And pray, Miss, what did he say to you ? " 

Evelina finds it impossible to refuse to accompany 
the Broughton family to the Opera ; the trial is almost 
intolerable, and never to be forgotten. At the en 
trance to the pit Mr. Broughton pulls out and tenders 
a guinea ; but on being informed that it will pay for 
only two places, pockets it, and takes the young ladies 
to the gallery. There he grumbles at the charge, low 



46 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

as it is, and declares that the entertainment is not worm 
it. " I was never so fooled out of my money beiore, 
he exclaims, " since the hour of my birth. Either the 
doorkeeper's a knave, or this is the greatest imposition 
that ever was put upon the public." 

" Mafoi" cried Madame Duval, " I never sat in such 
a mean place in all my life. Why, it's as high — we 
sha'n't see nothing." 

" I thought at the time," said Mr. Broughton, " that 
three shillings was an exorbitant price for a place in 
the gallery ; but as we'd been asked so much at the 
other doors, why, I paid it without many words ; but 
then, to be sure, thinks I, it can never be like any other 
gallery ; we shall see some crinkum crankum or other 
for our money, but I find it's as arrant a take-in as ever 
I met with." 

11 Why, it's as like the twelve-penny gallery at Drury 
Lane," cried the son, "as two peas are to one another. 
1 never knew lather so bit before." 

" Lord ! " said Miss Broughton, " I thought it would 
have been quite a fine place, all over I don't know 
what, and done quite in taste." 

This is excellent fooling. The Philistinism of the 
English middle-class was never more amusingly ridi- 
culed, and Miss Burney is entitled to the credit, such 
as it is, of having discovered the fertile vein of humour 
which its vulgar manifestations afford. She herself, 
however, came of the middle-class, and while touching 
its weaknesses and foibles with satiric pen, might grace- 



FANNY BURNEY. 47 



fully have brought out its better and finer qualities : 
but for any stroke of tenderness or sympathy we look 
in vain. The picture is everywhere highly-coloured. 
When she deals with the affections, it is in the same 
cynical spirit of amusement. 

Brown, a young haberdasher, pays his court to Polly 
Broughton, much to the disgust of the elder sister, 
who confides to Evelina her sentiments on the subject, 
explaining that Polly cares more for the eclat of being 
married first than she does for her chances of wedded 
happiness. Afterwards comes Polly with her version 
of the story. 

" She assured me [Evelina loquiiur\ with much 
tittering, that her sister was in a great fright lest she 
should be married first. 'So I make her believe that 
I will,' continued she, 'for I love dearly to plague 
her a little ; though, I declare, I don't intend to have 
Mr. Brown in reality : I am sure I don't like him half 
well enough — do you, Miss?' 

'' ' It is not possible for me to judge of his merits,' 
said I, 'as I am entirely a stranger to him.' 

" ' But what do you think of him, Miss?' 

" ' Why, really, I — I don't know.' 

" ' But do you think him handsome ? Some people 
reckon him to have a good, pretty person ; but I'm 
sure, for my part, I think he's monstrous ugly — don't 
you, Miss ? ' 

" ' I am no judge ; but I thinic his person is very — very 
well.' 

4 



48 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

" ' Very well ! Why, pray, Miss,' in a tone of vexa- 
tion, ' what fault can you find with it ? ' 

" ' Oh, none at all ! ' 

" ' I'm sure you must be very ill-natured if you could. 
Now, there's Biddy says she thinks nothing of him ; 
but I know it's all out of spite. You must know, Miss, 
it makes her as mad as can be that I should have a 
lover before her; but she's so proud that nobody will 
court her, and I often tell her that she'll die an old 
maid. But the thing is, she has taken it into her head 
to have a liking for Mr. Smith as lodges on the first 
floor ; but, Lord, he'll never have her, for he's quite a 
fine gentleman, and besides, Mr. Brown heard him say 
one day that he'd never marry as long as he lived, for 
he'd no opinion of matrimony.' 

" ' And did you tell your sister this ? " 

" ' To be sure, I told her directly ; but she did not 
mind me ; however, if she will be a fool, she must.' " 

No doubt this conversation is natural enough ; Miss 
Polly's share in it is strictly in keeping with her cha- 
racter, and Miss Polly herself, I feel certain, was among 
the number of Miss Burney's acquaintances. The 
Mr. Smith whom we hear of as " quite a fine gentle- 
man " is next introduced. He has been asked to lend 
"the first floor" for a dinner party, but cannot be 
brought to do more than lend it for "the tea." "The 
truth is," he confides to Evelina, "Miss Biddy and 
Polly take no care of anything; else, I'm sure, they 
should be always welcome to my room, for I'm never 



FANNY BURNEY. 49 

so happy as in obliging the ladies — that's my character, 
ma'am ; but really, the last time they had it, everything 
was made so greasy and nasty that, upon my word, to 
a man who wishes to have things a little genteel, it was 
quite cruel." 

Evidently Mr. Smith was very far from being the 
u fine gentleman " Miss Polly Broughton thought him ! 

As his acquaintance with Evelina ripens, he develops 
into her warm admirer, but he expresses his admiration 
with an astounding disregard of social decencies. 
'' Really," he says, " there is no resolving upon matri- 
mony all at once : what with the loss of one's liberty 
and what with the ridicule of one's acquaintance. I 
assure you, ma'am, you are the first lady who ever made 
me even demur on this subject ; for, after all, my dear 
ma'am, marriage i<r the devil ! " He continues, with 
equal elegance of style and refinement of feeling : — 
" To be sure, marriage is all-in-all with the ladies ; but 
with us gentlemen it's quite another thing. Now, only 
put yourself in my place : suppose you had such a large 
acquaintance of gentlemen as I have, and that you had 
always been used to appear a little — a little smart among 
them — why, now, how should you like to let yourself 
down all at once into a married man ! " 

Evelina's two lovers, Sir Clement Willoughby, the 
villain of the story, and Lord Orville, the hero, a 
model of the manly perfection that never was or will 
be, are both very vividly drawn, though with undeniable 
exaggeration. This is specially true of Sir Clement, who 



5o CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



seems to have stepped out of a transpontine melodrama. 
Lord Orville is gay, cautious, handsome, well-dressed, 
and by no means unskilful in playing the lovers part. 
Evelina admires him on their first meeting; and a 
woman's admiration, like a woman's pity, soon matures 
into love. He secures her confidence by chivalrously 
protecting her against Sir Clement Willoughby, and 
thenceforward her heart magnifies his virtues and his 
graces, even when, having been delivered from the 
coarseness of the Broughtons, " the vulgarness " of 
Madame Duval, and the obtrusiveness of a Captain 
Mirvan, she is immersed in the fascinations of fashion- 
able society. Her former tutor, the Rev. Mr. Villars, 
bids her beware of an unrequited surrender of her heart. 
But what can she do? Her affections have already 
been pledged. " She saw Lord Orville at a ball, and he 
was the most amiable of men ! She met him again at 
another, and he had every virtue under heaven ! " 
Happily, Lord Orville reciprocates her attachment, and 
saves her from the sorrows of unrewarded love. At the 
same time she is acknowledged by her father, Sir John 
Belmont, and thus the round of right is completed. 

Fresh and spontaneous as is the comedy of " Evelina," 
and lively and natural as are its characters, it has ceased 
to find many readers. It is often praised, but, I believe, 
not often read. People take its merits upon trust. They 
know that it is reckoned among the classics of English 
fiction, and they are content with the knowledge. The 
causes of this indifference do not seem to me far to seek. 



ELIZABETH INCH BALD. 51 

In the first place, the characters are amusing, but they 
do not interest us. They are all stamped with vulgarity, 
— silversmiths, lords, baronets, fine ladies, — all of them ; 
and their company wearies us, like a succession of farces. 
Again : as I have before hinted, the tone of the book is 
low-pitched ; there is a miserable want of elevation of 
thought and motive. These defects are the conse- 
quences of the conditions under which Fanny Burney 
spent her girlhood, and the atmosphere in which that 
girlhood was passed is the atmosphere she carries into 
her work. Had she come under higher and more 
refined influences, her books would have been higher 
and more refined. She made them what she herself 
had been made. Thus it is that they want that loftiness 
of purpose, that purity of aim, that noble artistic feeling, 
which alone could have endowed them with an ever 
active and sympathetic life. 

Elizabeth Inchbald.* 

The story of the girlhood of Elizabeth Inchbald 
would furnish an admirable foundation for a romance. 

Her maiden name was Simpson. She was the daughter 
of a small gentleman farmer, and born in 1753, at 
Standingfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk. The 
means of her father were very limited, but owing to his 
high personal character he was much esteemed by his 

* Born 1753, died 1821. Author of "A Simple Story," 1791 ; 
and " Nature and Art," 1796 ; and of numerous comedies and farces, 
which have mostly vanished from the stage. 



52 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

more opulent and aristrocratic neighbours. He died 
when Elizabeth was about eight years of age : in every 
way a serious misfortune for her, as the increasing 
poverty of the family prevented her from receiving the 
education which would have developed and cultivated 
her natural gifts, and corrected her faults of taste and 
temper. She was almost self-taught, but her quick 
intellect caught up and assimilated all the food that 
came within its reach, and reading and writing she 
seemed to acquire intuitively. " It is astonishing," she 
says in her autobiography, " how much all girls are 
inclined to literature to what boys are. My brother 
went to school seven years, and never could spell. I 
and two of my sisters, though we were never taught, 
could spell from infancy." As I have before observed, 
the mind of a girl expands and ripens more quickly than 
that of a boy. A girl of sixteen thinks and feels and 
reasons like a woman ; a boy of that age is still in the 
Inchoate period of hobbledehoyhood. Left to herself, 
Elizabeth Simpson read indiscriminately ; novels, plays, 
and poems, however, chiefly fascinated her, and acted 
powerfully upon her romantic temperament and quick 
imagination. Hence she began to fret at the monoto- 
nous dulness and narrowness of her daily life. She 
was conscious of great capabilities if she could but find 
a field for their exercise ; her spirit beat against the 
restraints of social conventionalism like a bird against 
the bars of its cage. The fervour of her disposition 
was stimulated, moreover, by her frequent visits to the 



ELIZABETH INCHBALD. 53 

theatre at Bury St. Edmunds. Her mother was a warm 
lover of the drama, and being acquainted with several 
performers, not only presented herself before the foot- 
lights three or four times a week, but frequently visited 
"behind the scenes." What a world of enchantment 
was thus revealed to the youthful Elizabeth ! For Youth 
fails to detect the tinsel and the paint, the falsehood 
and the shame ; sees in the stage a literal bit of fairy 
land ; revels in its light, its colour, and its music. The 
brook flows merrily, the forest leaves wave greenly, the 
palace rears aloft its columns of shapely marble ; for 
Youth will not believe in the pasteboard and the painted 
canvas. Well, perhaps it is fortunate that the young 
mind can lift itself out of the commonplaces of the 
actual into this ideal world, and surround itself with 
things of beauty which, after all, are mainly of its own 
creation. 

Do you remember what Lord Lytton says of Viola, 
the heroine of his mystical romance of "Zanoni"? 
" Oh, how gloriously," he says, " that life of the stage — 
that fairy world of music and song — dawned upon her ! 
It was the only world that seemed to correspond with 
her strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as 
if, cast hitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at 
last to see the forms and hear the language of her native 
land. Beautiful and true enthusiasm, rich with the 
promise of genius ! Boy or man, thou wilt never be a 
poet, if thou hast not felt the ideal, the romance, the 
Calypso's Isle, that opened to thee, when, for the first 



54 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

time, the magic curtain was drawn aside, and let in the 
world of poetry on the world of prose ! " 

These words may fitly be applied to Elizabeth Simp- 
son ; but the kind of training which they point at must 
necessarily be a dangerous one for many minds, inas- 
much as it unduly develops the imaginative powers and 
appeals too strongly to the emotions. 

In 1770, one of Elizabeth Simpson's brothers obtained 
an engagement at the Norwich theatre, under a manager 
named Griffith. This circumstance kindled the girl's 
young ambition ; and though she suffered from an 
impediment in her speech, which most persons would 
have considered a fatal obstacle to success upon the 
stage, she privately addressed herself to the manager, 
and solicited an engagement. He replied in courteous 
terms, but of course declined the services of an absolute 
novice. A correspondence of some length followed ; 
and I suppose that Mr. Griffith expressed himself with 
a warmth of appreciation of her epistolary talents that 
compensated for the repulse he had given to her 
dramatic ambition. At all events, with that impulsive- 
ness which distinguished her through life, she placed 
him on a pedestal of her own creation, and inscribed 
all her diaries and pocket-books with the romantic 
legend: — "Richard Griffith. Each dear letter of thy 
name is harmony." Many of the trials of her later life 
were due to this impulsiveness, which a wise education 
would have duly checked and controlled. 

At Bury St. Edmunds she became acquainted with 



ELIZABETH INCHBALD. 55 

a Mr. Inchbald, an actor of inconsiderable repute, but 
a man of integrity and amiable disposition. Her great 
talents and remarkable personal attractions made such 
an impression upon him that, after Elizabeth's return 
to Standingfield, he made her a proposal of marriage. 
But her mind was glowing with visions of future fame, 
to be realized in the great metropolis ; and at that time 
she was little inclined to smile upon a suitor who was 
several years older than herself. Weary of the monotony 
and dulness that surrounded her, she took at this time 
one of the most extraordinary resolutions that ever 
entered the head of a girl of eighteen — a resolution 
which it is difficult to excuse and impossible to justify. 
While residing with a friend at Bury St. Edmunds, she 
paid a clandestine visit to Norwich, in the hope that 
she might persuade Mr. Griffith in a personal interview 
to receive her as a member of his company. He proved 
inexorable ; and she then determined on a journey to 
London, without consulting any of her family or friends. 

" On the nth of April, 1772," she says in her Diary 
" early in the morning, I left my mother's house un- 
known to any one, came to London in the Norwich fly, 
and got lodgings in the ' Rose and Crown ' in (St.) John 
Street." A small sum of money, and a bandbox con- 
taining some wearing apparel, constituted the "capital" 
with which this beautiful young creature entered upon 
her imprudent undertaking. 

Immediately on her arrival in London she sought an 
interview with Messrs. King and Reddish, the managers 



56 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



of Drury Lane Theatre. King promised to call on her ; 
but not fulfilling his promise, she supposed that it was 
owing to the meanness of the quarter in which she had 
taken up her residence, and accordingly removed to the 
"White Swan " in Holborn. Then, for several days, she 
waited in anxious expectation ; amusing herself with 
reading, or with excursions about London — choosing 
however, the least frequented thoroughfares, lest she 
should be recognized by any of the friends or connec- 
tions of her family. 

At length her spirit was broken down by hope unful- 
filled and the weariness of solitude. She wrote to one 
of her married sisters, then living in London, and con- 
fessed to her the imprudence of which she had been 
guilty. While expecting her reply, she accidentally met 
with the husband of another sister, or, as she quaintly 
puts it in her Diary, " happened of brother Slender." 
She was thus brought within the influence of family ties, 
and wisely accepted the protection offered her by her 
brother-in-law and her sister. 

She then resumed negotiations with the Drury Lane 
managers ; but soon discovered that a young and 
beautiful woman, in entering upon a theatrical life, is 
frequently exposed to considerable anxiety and even peril. 
She suffered many insults, was exposed to not a few 
indignities, brow-beaten, and disappointed; so that her joy 
was great when she fell in again with Mr. Inchbald. On 
applying to him for advice, he assured her that she could 
be effectually defended and supported only by a husband. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 57 



" But who would marry me ? " she said, in frank 
simplicity. 

" I would," replied Mr. Inchbald, " if you would have 
me now." 

" Yes, sir," said Elizabeth ; " and would for ever be 
grateful." 

Thus it came to pass that the young beauty gave her 
hand to her middle-aged suitor. There was no affecta- 
tion of love or sentiment on her part, but she really 
appreciated his good sense, amiability, and integrity ; 
and their married life — a brief one, for Mr. Inchbald 
died in 1779 — was very happy. His widow did not 
marry again. She pursued an industrious and not 
undistinguished career as actress, dramatist, and novelist, 
to a green old age. Her death took place at Kensington 
on the 1st of August, 1821, in her sixty-ninth year. 

Charlotte Bronte. * 

Half a century ago, a child just entering on her teens, 
— a grave, self-contained, demure little maiden, — sat 
down and composed a "History of the Year" (1829), 
which, as an unconscious revelation of character, and 
a flash of insight into the future, I think it desirable 
to transfer to these pages : — 

" Our papa lent my sister Maria a book. It was an 

* Born i3i6. died 1855. Wrote "Jane Eyre," 1847 ; " Shirley," 
1849: "Villette," 1853; "The Professor" (published posthu- 
mously), 1856. In 1846 she issued a volume of "Poems," by 
herself and her sisters, Emily and Anne. 



58 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



old geography book ; she wrote on its blank leaf, ' Papa 
lent me this book.' This book is a hundred and 
twenty years old : it is at this moment lying before me. 
While I write this I am in the kitchen of the parsonage, 
Ha worth ; Tabby, the servant, is washing up the break- 
fast things; and Anne, my youngest sister, (Maria was 
my eldest,) is kneeling on a chair, looking at some cakes 
which Tabby has been baking for us. Emily is in the 
parlour brushing the carpet. Papa and Bramwell [the 
brother] are going to Keighley. Aunt is upstairs in 
her room, and I am sitting by the table writing this in 
the kitchen. Keighley is a small town four miles from 
here. Papa and Bramwell are gone for the newspaper, 
the Leeds Intelligencer, a most excellent Tory newspaper, 
edited by Mr. Wood, and the proprietor Mr. Henneman. 
We take two and see three newspapers a week. We 
take the Leeds I'itellige?icer (Tory), and the Leeds Mer- 
cury (Whig), edited by Mr. Baines, and his brother, 
son-in-law, and his two sons Edward ar.d Talbot. We 
see the John Bull: it is a high Tory, very violent. Mr. 
Driver lends us it, as likewise Blackwood's Magazine, 
the most able periodical there is. The editor is Mr. 
Christopher North, an old man seventy-four years of 
age; the ist of April is his birthday: his company are 
Timothy Tickler, Morgan O'Doherty, Macrabrin Mor- 
decai, Mullion, Warnell, and James Hogg, a man of 
most extraordinary genius, a Scottish shepherd.* Our 

* The simple iaith which the young writer accepts the mystifica- 
tions of Professor Wilson ("Christopher North") is amusing. 




CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 59 



plays were established: 'Young Men,' Jane 1826; 
'Our Fellows,' July 1827 ; 'Islanders/ December 1827. 
These are our three great plays that are not kept 
secret. Emily's and my best plays were established 
the 1st of December, 1827 ; the others, March 1828. 
Best plays mean secret plays ; they are very nice ones. 
All our plays are very strange ones ; their nature I need 
not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember 
them. The ' Young Men ' play took its rise from some 
wooden soldiers Bramwell had ; ' Our Fellows,' from 
1 yEsop's Fables'; and 'The Islanders,' from several 
events which happened. I will sketch out the origin 
of our plays more explicitly, if I can. First : ' Young 
Men.' Papa bought Bramwell some wooden soldiers 
at Leeds. When papa came home it was night, and 
we were in bed ; so next morning Bramwell came to 
our door with a box of soldiers. Emily and I jumped 
out of bed, and I snatched up one and exclaimed, ' This 
is the Duke of Wellington ! This shall be the Duke ! ' 
When I had said this, Emily likewise took up one and 
said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she 
said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the 
whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every 
part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called 
him ' Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much 
like herself, and we called him ' Waiting Boy.' Bram- 
well chose his, and called him ' Buonaparte.' " 

it must be confessed that this is wholly unlike the 
composition of an ordinary girl of twelve or thirteen, 



60 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

and one might reaaonibly infer from it that the writer 
was a child of exceptional mental gifts, developed under 
exceptional conditions. No one would suppose it to 
have been written by the average boarding-school " young 
lady," or by the prim and prosaic product of respectable 
British Philistinism, — the girl who can play a little, and 
draw a little, but whose mind, whatever its natural ten- 
dencies and powers, has been carefully crushed down to 
one fixed traditional system. There is something fresh 
and original in its quaint simplicity, and one finds oneself 
wishful to know more about those "best plays" which 
were " secret plays," and about the little critic who can 
censure John Bull as "very violent," and pronounce, 
with an edifying air of authority, that Blackwood's is 
"the most able periodical there is." 

Well, in very truth, the writer was endowed with 
exceptional powers of mind, and was brought up under 
exceptional influences. I suppose the story of Charlotte 
Bronte's child-life is as pathetic a chapter as literature 
affords. It seems to me one of extraordinary psycho- 
logical interest, for never did "the girl" more assuredly 
" make the woman " — never was the flower more dis- 
tinctly the natural development from the seed. Nor do 
we often meet with a more striking and interesting illus- 
tration of the effect of external circumstances upon the 
growth of a powerful mind. 

The father of Charlotte Bronte, the Rev. Patrick 
Bronte, was a native of Down, in Ireland. But having 
been educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, he 



CHARLOTTE BRONTr. 6i 



took orders in the Church of England ; and obtained 
a curacy in Essex, whence he removed to Hartshead, in 
Yorkshire. There he married Miss Maria Bramwell, a 
lady of considerable natural gifts and gentle disposition, 
and there two daughters were born to him— Maria and 
Elizabeth, both of whom died in childhood. From 
Hartshead Mr. Bronte was preferred to a small living 
at Thornton, which in due time became the birthplace 
of Charlotte, her brother Patrick, and her sisters Emily 
and Anne. From the birth of the latter, Mrs. Bronte, 
who unhappily transmitted a delicate constitution to 
her children, began to decline in health ; and in Sep- 
tember 182 1, about a year and a half after her husband's 
removal to the rectory of Haworth, she passed away. 
At that time Maria, her eldest surviving child, was 
scarcely nine years old. 

If from their mother they inherited their constitutional 
weakness, it was from their father they derived their 
mental power and singular force of character. He was 
no common man ; and in a different sphere, and under 
more fortunate conditions, would probably have risen 
to distinction. But his reserve and self-concentration 
amounted almost to eccentricity, and he lived a life of 
strange and even gloomy seclusion, which could not but 
influence the young minds growing up around him. For 
lack of companionship they were driven in upon them- 
selves ; and none of those sweet domesticities fell to 
their lot which, in most cases, so happily round off 
the angularities of childhood. Gifted with altogether 

5 



62 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

exceptional ability, and linked together by their singular 
isolation, they lived for one another, and found in their 
own little circle all the companionship they desired. 
Maria, the eldest, was accustomed to read the news- 
papers, and afterwards reported to the others such 
matters as seemed of interest and value ; so that at an 
age when childhood generally plays with trifles, these 
extraordinary little sages discussed "affairs of State" and 
serious political questions. Almost as soon as they 
could read and write, they were wont to invent and act 
little plays of their own composition, in which the Duke 
of Wellington, who was Charlotte's hero — I suppose she 
was attracted by his strength of will and rigid standard 
of duty — invariably appeared as conqueror ; and to 
indulge in long debates upon the Duke, Napoleon, 
Hannibal, and Julius Caesar. Mr. Bronte, who was by 
no means unmindful of their education, tells an anecdote 
in illustration of their intellectual precocity : — On one 
occasion, assembling them round him, he inquired of 
Anne, the youngest, what a child like her most wanted ; 
she answered, "Age and experience." Then he asked 
Emily what he had best do with her brother Bramwell. 
who was sometimes ill-behaved ; she replied, " Reason 
with him ; and when he won't listen to reason, whip 
him." Of Bramwell he asked what was the best way of 
knowing the difference between the intellects of man and 
woman ; he answered, " By considering the difference 
between them as to their bodies." Next he requested 
Charlotte to name the best book in the world. She 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 63 

replied, " The Bible "—an answer which, perhaps, 
most children would give. And the next best ?— " The 
Book of Nature " — an answer which very few children 
would give. What was the best mode of education for 
a woman ? — " That which would make her rule her house 
well." Lastly, of Maria he asked, what was the best 
mode of spending time? She replied, " By laying it out in 
preparation for a happy eternity." If these were curious 
questions to address to children, the eldest of whom was 
not eleven years old, the answers were still more curious, 
and admit us to a distinct perception of the originality 
of character and independence of thought which distin- 
guished the young members of the Bronte family. 

The supervision of this strange household rested in 
the hands of Miss Bramwell, an elder sister of the 
deceased mother; but she appears to have been in' no 
respect adapted to secure the confidence and love of 
children. Their father took charge of their education ; 
but to a great extent they were self-educated, and by 
assiduous and miscellaneous reading acquired a large 
amount of information on all kinds of subjects. In 1824 
Maria and Elizabeth Bronte were placed at a school 
which, a year or two before, had been opened at Cowan 
Bridge for the daughters of clergymen. It was avowedly 
conducted upon economical principles ; but the economy 
was pushed to a dangerous extreme. This is not the 
place for a discussion of its mistakes of management ; in 
the pages of "Jane Eyre " the reader will find a picture 
of its " interior " which is known to be accurate in all 



64 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

important details, though, perhaps, somewhat highly 
coloured by the writer's burning indignation. No doubt 
the system told more heavily upon the Brontes than upon 
most children, owing to their inherent feebleness of con- 
stitution. At all events, Maria and Elizabeth daily grew 
weaker; and though they were cheered by the com- 
panionship of their sisters, Charlotte and Emily, during 
the latter portion of their sojourn at Cowan Bridge, their 
health showed no signs of improvement. In the spring 
of 1825 Maria's increasing illness rendered necessary her 
removal ; and she returned home to die. Five or six 
weeks afterwards she was followed by Elizabeth. It was 
then only too clear that Cowan Bridge did not suit the 
health of the Brontes, and in the autumn Charlotte and 
Emily were brought back to Haworth. 

Haworth is a small Yorkshire village,* with houses, 
mostly built of a dull grey stone, stretching irregularly 
along the main road. A " beck " or stream washes the 
base of the hill on which it clusters, and its steep ascent 
is crowned by a small and ancient church. A narrow 
lane diverging from the main road leads to the church, 
the parsonage, and the belfried school-house. The 
parsonage, "the home of the Brontes," t is a two-storied 

* Haworth is famous as the scene of the evangelical labours of 
that remarkable man, the Rev. W. Grimshaw, whose life was written 
by the Rev. John Newton (Cowper's friend, and author of the 
" Cardiphonia "). He was the friend of Whitfield and Wesley. 

f " Haworth Parsonage," says Mrs. Gaskell, " is an oblong stone 
house, facing down the hill on which the village stands, and with 
the front door right opposite to the western door of the church, 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 65 

house of gray stone, with a small garden in front, which 
a stone wall separates from the gloomy, treeless church- 
yard. The church itself, a building of great antiquity, 
has been modernized into a plain, uninteresting building. 
In the interior the pews are of black oak, with high divi- 
sions. Brasses, altar-tombs, or other monuments are 
conspicuous by their absence; except, indeed, a plain 
mural tablet on the right-hand side of the chancel, which 
every visitor regards with interest. It bears an inscrip- 
tion commemorative of Maria Bronte, the wife of the 
Rev. P. Bronte, who died, aged 39, in September 1821. 
Also of their daughter Maria, who died in May 1825, 
aged 12, and of Elizabeth, who died in June 1825, aged 
11. Of Patrick, who died in September 1848, aged 31 ; 
Emily Jane, December 1848, aged 30; Anne, May 
1849 ; and Charlotte, March 1855, aged 39. 

distant about a hundred yards. Of this space twenty yards or so in 
depth are occupied by the grassy garden, which is scarcely wider 
than the house. The graveyard lies on two sides of the house and 
garden. The house consists of four rooms on each floor, and is two 
stories high. When the Bronte's took possession, they made the 
larger parlour, to the left of the entrance, the family sitting-room, 
while that on the right was appropriated to Mr. Bronte as a study. 
Behind this was the kitchen ; behind the former, a sort of flagged 
store-room. Upstairs were four bedchambers of similar size, with 
the addition of a small apartment over the passage, or "lobby," as 
we call it in the north. This was to the front, the staircase going 
up right opposite to the entrance. There is the pleasant old fashion 
of window-seats all through the house ; and one can see that the 
parsonage was built in the days when wood was plentiful, as the 
massive stair-banisters and the wainscots and the heavy window- 
frames testify." — Mrs. Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Bronte,^. 34,35. 



66 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Cold, cheerless, and unpicturesque is the scenery in 
the immediate neighbourhood of the village. The air 
hangs heavy with the smoke of toiling factories ; the 
vegetation is sickly and meagre, — " it does not flourish, 
it merely exists " ; and bushes and shrubs take the place 
of trees. Instead of fresh green hedges, garlanded with 
woodbine or briony, sweetbriar or convolvulus, according 
to the season, the fields are divided by stern dykes ; and 
the few crops produced by the lean soil consist of pale ; 
stunted, gray-green oats. But beyond this sterile belt, 
which tells of the malignant influence of our work-day 
civilisation, lies an expanse of dim and purple moorland, 
bounded by a range of billowy hills ; the "scoops" or 
troughs into which they fall revealing other ranges of 
hills in the distance, all alike in shape and colour, and 
all suggesting, with their wild bleak look, an eery feeling 
of solitude and silent desolation. Still further, and the 
breezy moors are broken up by wooded glens or ravines, 
each brightened by a foaming stream, and so rich in 
foliage as to seem a bit of sylvan Arcady. Their slopes 
are thickly clothed with brushwood and dwarf oak, which, 
near the top, are replaced by tall green firs. In these 
shady hollows the noisy waters work out for themselves 
a devious way : now breaking in foam against tiny 
promontories, now eddying round some gnarled and 
twisted tree-root, now splashing and dashing over a 
rocky ledge. The turf is everywhere besprinkled with 
^weet wild-flowers ; with bluebells, bright as the arch of 
heaven, or pearly blossoms that spangle the grass like 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 67 



humble emblems of "some starlit spot in space." The 
influence of landscapes such as these colour the finest 
pages of Charlotte Bronte's writings. They helped to 
mould her tastes and animate her genius, which owes 
to them, perhaps, something of its robust vigour and 
freshness. Nursed among them, her imagination grew 
up strong, hardy, and healthy ; it fed upon the breezes of 
the wolds, and expanded into a hearty and wholesome 
life. 

In January 1831 Charlotte Bronte went to school 
again. Her teacher was a Miss W., residing at Roe 
Head, on the Leeds and Huddersfield road : a woman 
of taste and talent, who took a keen interest in the 
mental growth of her remarkable pupil. Under her 
charge she remained for about a twelvemonth, after 
which she returned to the monotony of Haworth parson- 
age. Her course of life she thus describes : — In the 
morning, from nine till half-past twelve, she taught her 
sisters and practised drawing. A long walk occupied 
the time until dinner. Between dinner and tea the 
needle was industriously and skilfully plied ; after tea 
she either wrote, read, drew, or did a little fancy-work. 
The usual social dissipations were unknown in that quiet 
household ; but occasionally a neighbour " dropped in " 
to take tea, or one or other of Mr. Bronte's brother 
clergymen. It is not to be wondered at that a mind 
like Charlotte Bronte's was led, by a life like this, to feed 
upon itself and indulge in its own creations. But she 
read continually, and she read miscellaneously ; and she 



68 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

not only read, but analysed what she read, forming her 
own independent judgment, and maturing that faculty 
of close, keen observation and criticism, to which her 
novels owe so much of their power. 

At this time Charlotte Bronte was very small in figure, 
though not at all dwarfed or stunted; her limbs and 
head were in harmonious proportion to her slender 
and not ungraceful body. Her hair was soft, thick, and 
brown; her eyes large, well-shaped, and of a reddish 
brown, though, when closely examined, the iris seemed 
to be composed of a great variety of tints. Usually 
their expression was intelligent but tranquil; on occa- 
sion, however, they could shine out with a sudden light 
like that of a lamp new kindled, — reminding one of what 
one reads of the eyes of the poet Burns. " I never saw 
the like," says Mrs. Gaskell, "in any other human 
creature." The rest of her features were plain and 
irregular; but it was impossible to dwell on the large 
nose and crooked mouth while you were under the 
spell of those wonderful eyes and of the power that 
pervaded every lineament of her countenance. Her 
hands and feet were marvellously small. " When one 
of the former was placed in mine," remarks Mrs. Gaskell, 
" it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of 
my palm." In her personal attire Charlotte Bronte was 
singularly neat ; and though free from the slightest touch 
of personal vanity, she had a lady's liking for well-fitting 
shoes and gloves. 

At Roe Head Charlotte Bronte formed a strong friend 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 69 

ship with a young lady whom her biographer calls " E."— 
the Caroline Helstone of "Shirley," and with another 
whom we know of only under the name of " Mary." The 
latter supplies a very graphic sketch of the plain, short- 
sighted, studious little maiden, who was afterwards to 
rise to such enduring fame. 

" I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very 
old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and mise 
rable. She was coming to school at Miss W.'s. When 
she appeared in the schoolroom her dress was changed, 
but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so short- 
sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, 
and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight 
of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with 
a strong Irish accent. When a book was given her she 
dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched 
it ; and when she was told to hold her head up, up went 
the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was 
not possible to help laughing." 

She soon, however, commanded respect by the superi- 
ority of her abilities, and won affection by the sweetness 
of her nature. 

"She would confound us by knowing things that were 
out of our range altogether. She was acquainted with 
most of the short pieces of poetry that we had to learn 
by heart ; would tell us the authors, the poems they 
were taken from, and sometimes repeat a page or two, 
and tell us the plot. She had a habit of writing in 
Italics (printing characters), and said she had learnt it 



70 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

by writing in their magazine. They brought out a 
' magazine ' once a month, and wished it to look as like 
print as possible. She told us a tale out of it. No one 
wrote in it, and no one read it, but herself, her brother, 
and two sisters. She promised to show me some of 
their magazines, but retracted it afterwards, and would 
never be persuaded to do so. In our play hours she 
sate, or stood still, with a book, if possible. Some of 
us once urged her to be on our side in a game at ball. 
She said she had never played, and could not play. 
We made her try, but soon found that she could not 
see the ball, so we put her out. She took all our pro- 
ceedings with pliable indifference, and always seemed 
to need a previous resolution to say ' No ' to anything. 
She used to go and stand under the trees in the play- 
ground, and say it was pleasanter. She endeavoured to 
explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of sky, 
etc. We understood but little of it. She said that at 
Cowan Bridge she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, 
to watch the water flow by. I told her she should have 
gone fishing ; she said she never wanted" [How the 
different characters of the two schoolgirls— the practical 
and the ideal — come out in this brief dialogue ! The 
flowing burn suggests to one the rod of the angler ; the 
other watches it, and dreams.] " She always showed 
physical feebleness in everything. She ate no animal 
food at school. She used to draw much better, and 
more quickly, than anything we had seen before, and 
knew much about celebrated pictures and painters. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 7 i 



Whenever an jpportunity offered of examining a picture 
or cut of any kind, she went over it piecemeal, with her 
eyes close to ;he paper, looking so long that we used to 
ask her ' what, she saw in it.' She could always see plenty, 
and explained it very well/' 

Because she saw with the eye, and spoke with the 
tongue, oi genius. 

"She used to speak of her two elder sisters, Maria 
and Elizabeth, who died at Cowan Bridge. I used to 
believe them to have been wonders of talent and kind- 
ness. She told me, early one morning, that she had 
just been dreaming; she had been told that she was 
wanted in the drawing-room, and it was Maria and 
Elizabeth. I was eager for her to go on ; and when she 
said there was no more, I said, 'But go on ! Make it 
out! I know you can.' She said she would not; she 
wished she had not dreamed, for it did not go on nicely: 
they were changed ; they had forgotten what they used 
to care for. They were very fashionably dressed, and 
began criticising the room, etc. 

" This habit of ' making out ' interests for themselves, 
that most children get who have none in actual life, was 
very strong in her. The whole family used to 'make 
out' histories, and invent characters and events. I told 
her sometimes they were like growing potatoes in a 
cellar. She said sadly, ' Yes ! I know we are ! ' 

"Some one at school said she 'was always talking 
about clever people ; Johnson, Sheridan, etc' She said, 
' Now, you don't know the meaning of clever ; Sheridan 



72 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



might be clever: yes, Sheridan was clever,— scamps 
often are ; but Johnson hadn't a spark of cleverality 
in him.' No one appreciated the opinion ; they made 
some trivial remark about ' cleverality,' and she said 
no more. 

"This is the epitome of her life. At our house she 
had just as little chance of a patient hearing, for though 
not schoolgirlish, we were more intolerant. We had a 
rage for practicality, and laughed all poetry to scorn. 
Neither she nor we had any idea but that our opinions 
were the opinions of all the sensible people in the world, 
and we used to astonish each other at every sentence. . . 
Charlotte, at school, had no plan of life beyond what 
circumstances made for her. She knew that she must 
provide for herself, and chose her trade ; at least, chose 
to begin it at once. The idea of self-improvement ruled 
her even at school. It was to cultivate her tastes. She 
always said there was enough of hard practicality and 
useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the 
thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds. 
She picked up every scrap of information concerning 
painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc., as if it were 
gold." 

Like Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Bronte at school 
was a great raconteur. As she and her fellow-pupils 
lay in bed, she invented for their amusement long and 
stirring stories, sometimes of so tragic a character as to 
frighten them almost out of their wits, or move them to 
tears and even sobs. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 73 

Before I close my sketch of Charlotte Bronte's girl- 
hood, I must allow her to speak for herself, and to 
reveal in her own words the serious and thoughtful 
aspect of her pure nature. Here is one of the letters 
she was in the habit of addressing to her dear friend 
" E." It is full of just and admirable sense ; the letter 
of a thoughtful and experienced woman, as one would 
suppose, rather than of a shy young girl, who had had 
absolutely no knowledge whatever of the great world. 
Thus it runs : — 

" In your last, you request me to tell you of your 
faults. Now, really, how can you be so foolish ? I 
won't tell you of your faults, because I don't know them. 
What a creature would that be, who, after receiving an 
affectionate and kind letter from a beloved friend, should 
sit down and write a catalogue of defects by way of 
answer ! Imagine me doing so, and then consider what 
epithets you would bestow on me. ' Conceited, dogma- 
tical, hypocritical little humbug,' I should think, would 
be the mildest. Why, child ! I've neither time nor incli- 
nation to reflect on your faults when you are so far from 
me, and when, besides, kind letters and presents, and so 
forth, are continually bringing forth your goodness in the 
most prominent light. Then, too, there are judicious 
relations always round you, who can much better dis 
charge that unpleasant office. I have no doubt their 
advice is completely at your service ; why, then, should 
I intrude mine ? If you will not hear them, it will 
be vain though one should rise from the dead to in- 



74 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

struct you. Let us have no more nonsense, if you love 

me 

" You ask me to recommend you some books for 
your perusal. I will do so in as few words as I can. 
If you like poetry, let it be first-rate : Milton, Shake- 
speare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though 
I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Words- 
worth, and South ey. Now don't be startled at the names 
of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, 
and their works are like themselves. You will know 
how to choose the good, and to avoid the evil; the 
finest passages are always the purest, the bad are in- 
variably revolting ; you will never wish to read them 
over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare, and the 
Don Juan, perhaps the Cain, of Byron, though the latter 
is a magnificent poem, and read the rest fearlessly ; that 
must indeed be a depraved mind which can gather evil 
from Henry VIII., from Richard III., from Macbeth, 
and Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Scott's sweet, wild, 
romantic poetry can do you no harm. Nor can Words- 
worth's, nor Campbell's, nor Southey's — the greatest part 
at least of his ; some is certainly objectionable. For 
history, read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History, 
if you can ; I never did. For fiction, read Scott alone ; 
all novels after his are worthless. For biography, read 
Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Boswell's Life of Johnson, 
Southey's Life of Nelson, Lockhart's Life of Burns, 
Moore's Life of Sheridan, Moore's Life of Byron, Wolfe's 
Remains. For natural history, read Bewick, and Audu- 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 



75 



bon, and Goldsmith, and White's History of Selborne. 
For divinity, your brother will advise you chere. I can 
only say, adhere to standard authors, and avoid novelty." 
It must be remembered that Charlotte Bronte, when 
she enunciated these criticisms, was but eighteen years 
old. In later life she would, without doubt, have modi- 
fied them considerably. We know, from her warmly 
expressed admiration of Thackeray, that she lived to 
prefer, in fiction, at least one distinguished writer to Sir 
Walter Scott. She probably learned, too, that Gold- 
smith's " Animated Nature " is not a trustworthy authority 
on natural history. And I can well believe that in 
history she came to doubt the value of Hume and 
Rollin. The list of books with which she furnishes her 
correspondent shows, however, the defects as well as 
the wide extent of her reading, and enables us to under- 
stand the cause of some of her weaknesses as a writer. 
Taken in conjunction with the conditions under which 
she passed her early years, they fully explain the pecu- 
liarities on which certain critics dwelt with unnecessary 
vehemence. Her genius, strong and clear and masterful 
as it is, is narrow in its scope, because its field of inquiry 
was limited. Her taste is sometimes at fault, because 
she had no authoritative standard of comparison by 
which to test it. Had she read more, had her education 
been more extensive and thorough, had her experience 
of the world been wider and her knowledge of humanity 
more profound, she might have produced some works of 
greater finish and broader view, — but, after all, have we 



76 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

not reason to be thankful that she gave us " Jane Eyre " 
and " Shirley " and " Villette " ? 

It was in the August of 1847, long after Charlotte 
Bronte had leached womanhood, that " Jane Eyre " was 
published, under the pseudonym of " Currer Bell." At 
first the literary organs took scant notice of it, but by 
degrees its circle of readers increased, and before Christ- 
mas it was known that a masterpiece had been added 
to the treasures of English fiction by a new author — 
an author of whom no one in London society had ever 
heard — an author whose very sex was a matter of con- 
jecture. There was a freshness, a power, an originality 
about it, which commended it to the most cultured taste, 
while the ordinary reader was fascinated by the novel 
nature of the plot and the deep interest of the scenes 
and situations. The scenery, moreover, was strikingly 
new, as well as painted by a cunning hand. Then the 
heroine was an entirely original conception, and in the 
most vivid contrast possible to the creations of Mrs. Gore, 
or Miss Austin, or Miss Edgeworth. Here was a woman 
represented as plain, unattractive, and small of figure, 
without rank or blue blood or wealth, or any of those 
adventitious charms so freely bestowed on their heroines 
by preceding novelists ; and yet the reader's sympathies 
are irresistibly enlisted on her behalf — we follow her 
fortunes from first to last with the intensest and even the 
painfullest curiosity. Nor was the hero, Rochester, less 
unconventional than Jane Eyre herself. The scenes in 
which the actors are placed bear the stamp of freshness, 



SARA COLERIDGE. 



17 



were evidently painted from life, and painted with un- 
mistakable force and exactness. It was noted, too, that 
the new author had the command of a style of singular 
terseness, variety, and eloquence ; and that the incidental 
descriptions of nature were as brilliant as they were true 
in colouring. I well remember the eagerness with which 
I devoured page after page of this remarkable novel, and 
the consciousness that broke upon me of being face to 
face with a strenuous and ardent genius, from which in 
the course of time might be expected a series of additions 
to the masterpieces of literature. 

The faults and failings of "Jane Eyre," and of the 
works from the same pen — alas, too few ! — that suc- 
ceeded it, were neither few nor inconsiderable ; but they 
sprang, not from any defective strain in their writer's 
genius, or any warp in her moral nature, but from the 
strange and, in some respects, unfavourable conditions 
under which Charlotte Bronte's girlhood was passed. 

Sara Coleridge. 

Sara Coleridge,* the author of " Phantasmion," the 
fourth child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and 
philosopher, was born at Greta Hall, near Keswick, on 
the 22nd of December, 1803. " Mamma used to tell 
me,'' she writes, "that, as a young infant, I was not so 

* Born 1803, died 1852. Author of " Phantasmion, a Poem;" 
an " Essay on Rationalism ; " " Pretty Lessons for Good Children j" 
" Memoirs of the Chevalier Bayard, by his Loyal Servant " (trans- 
lated from the French), etc. 

6 



78 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

fine and flourishing as my brother Berkeley, who was of 
a taller make than any of her other children, or Derwent, 
though not quite so small as her eldest born. In a few 
months, however, I became very presentable, and had 
my share of adoration. ' Little grand-lamas,' my father 
used to call babes in arms, feeling doubtless all the while 
what a blessed contrivance of the Supreme Benignity it 
is that man, in the very weakest stage of his existence, 
has power in that very weakness. Thus babyhood, even 
where attended with no special grace, has a certain loveli- 
ness of its own, and seems to be surrounded, as by a 
spell, in its attractions for the female heart, and for all 
hearts which partake of woman's tenderness, and whose 
tenderness is drawn out by circumstances in that 
particular direction." 

Coleridge wrote of his daughter when she was yet but 
a few months old : " My meek little Sara is a remarkably 
interesting baby, with the finest possible skin and large 
blue eyes ; and she smiles as if she were basking in 
a sunshine, as mild as moonlight, of her own quiet 
happiness." 

In her third year she met with an accident, which 
increased the delicacy of constitution she inherited 
from her father. It produced so strong an impression 
on her mind that she recollected every detail of it even 
in her mature womanhood, — how she came dripping up 
the Forge Field, after having fallen into the river between 
the rails of a high wooden bridge that crossed it. " The 
maid had my baby-cousin Edith, sixteen months younger 



SARA COLERIDGE. 79 



than I, in her arms ; I was rushing away from Derwent, 
who was fond of playing the elder brother on the strength 
of his two years' seniority, when he was trying in some 
way to control me, and in my hurry slipped from the 
bridge into the current. Luckily for me, young Richard- 
son was still at work in his father's forge. He doffed 
his coat and rescued me from the water. I had fallen 
from a considerable height, but the strong current of 
the Greta received me safely. I remember nothing more 
of this adventure but the walk home through the field. I 
was put between blankets on my return to the house ; 
but my constitution had received a shock, and 1 became 
tender and delicate, having before been a thriving child 
As an infant I had been nervous and insomnolent. My 
mother has often told me how seldom I would sleep 
in the cradle, how I required to be in her arms before 
I could settle into sound sleep. This weakness has 
accompanied me through life." 

A few words descriptive of Greta Hall, where she was 
born, and where she resided until her marriage in 1829, 
when she was twenty-six years old, are due to the reader. 

It was built on a hill, on one side of the town of 
Keswick, with a large nursery-garden in front. At the 
end of this garden a gate opened upon the town. A few 
steps further a bridge spanned the foaming Greta. At 
the back of the house grew an orchard of not very 
productive apple and plum trees, below which a wood 
stretched down to the river-side. A rough path ran 
along the bottom of the wood, leading on the one hand 



80 CHILD LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

to the Cardingmill Field, which the river nearly sur- 
rounded ; on the other hand to the Forge. " Oh, that 
rough path beside the Greta ! " exclaims Sara Coleridge, 
" how much of my childhood, of my girlhood, of my 
youth, was spent there ! " 

As to the house itself, it consisted really of two houses 
under one roof, the larger part of which was occupied 
by Sara's parents and her uncle and aunt Southey, while 
in the smaller resided Mr. Jackson, the landlord. On 
the ground floor was the kitchen, a cheerful, stone- 
flagged apartment, looking into the back place, which 
was skirted by poultry and other outhouses, and had trees 
on the side of the orchard, from which it was separated 
by a gooseberry hedge. A drooping laburnum-tree hung 
its clusters of gold in the open space outside the back 
kitchen. 

A passage ran from the kitchen to the front-door ; to 
the left of it lay the parlour, which was the dining-room 
and general sitting-room. This apartment had a large 
window looking upon the green, which stretched out in 
front in the form of a long horseshoe, with a flower-bed 
circling it, and fenced off from the great nursery garden 
by pales and high shrubs and hedges. Another and a 
smaller window looked out upon another grass-plot. 
The room was comfortably but plainly furnished, con- 
taining many pictures, two oil landscapes by a friend, 
and several water-colour landscapes. One recess was 
occupied by a frightful amateur portrait of Sara's mother, 
by a young lady. 



SARA COLERIDGE. 81 

The passage ran round the kitchen and connected 
two small rooms in one wing of the rambling tenement, 
in one of which were kept the lanterns and a grimly 
formidable array of clogs and pattens for out-of-door 
roamings. The shoes were ranged in a row, ascending 
from the youngest to the oldest, and curiously illustrative 
of the various stages of life. 

The staircase, to the right of the kitchen, ascended 
to a landing-place filled with bookcases. A few steps 
more conducted to the little bedroom occupied by Sara's 
mother and herself,—" that dear bedroom," she says, 
" where I lay down, in joy or in sorrow, nightly for so 
many years of comparative health and happiness ; whence 
I used to hear the river flowing, and sometimes the forge- 
hammer in the distance at the end of the field, but 
seldom other sounds in the night than of stray animals. 
A few steps further was a little wing-bedroom, — then 
the study where Southey, that most industrious of men 
of letters, sat all day occupied with literary labours and 
researches ; in the evening, however, it was used as a 
drawing-room for company. Here were duly received 
all the guests who came to tea and chat. The room 
boasted of three windows : a large one looked down 
upon the green with the wide flower-border and over 
to the sapphire-blue waters of Keswick lake and the 
great green mountains beyond. Two smaller windows 
commanded a view of the lower part of the town. The 
room was lined with books in beautiful bindings ; there 
were books also in brackets, elegantly lettered vellum- 



82 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

covered volumes lying on their sides in a heap. The 
walls were hung with pictures, mostly family portraits. 
At the back of the room was a comfortable sofa, and 
there were sundry tables, besides my uncle's library 
table, his screen and desk and other articles. Altogether, 
with its internal fittings up, its noble prospect, and its 
pleasing proportions, this was a charming room. Southey 
had some fine volumes of engravings, which were some- 
times shown to visitors ; especially Duffus' sketches 
from Raffaelle and Michael Angelo from the Vatican." 

On the same floor with the study and wing bedrooms 
was a larger bedroom, above the kitchen, — Southey and 
his wife's sleeping apartment. A passage, one side of 
which was filled with bookcases, led to the Jackson part 
of the house, the whole of which after his decease — and 
some portion before — belonged to Coleridge and Southey. 
A room called the organ room was used by Coleridge as 
a study. Other rooms were set apart for various pur- 
poses. In the uppermost story were six rooms, a nursery, 
nursery bedroom, maid's bedroom, and a dark apple- 
room, supposed to be the abode of "a bogle." It was 
possible to ascend to the roof, and from the leads over 
one wing of the house to look far away to the Penrith 
road, misty Brow Top, and the Saddleback side of that 
hilly region. 

Such was the scene in which the early years of Sara 
Coleridge's life was passed ; a scene adapted to teach 
her a love of books and a love of Nature, while it struck 
the vein of sympathy that permeated her character, and 



SARA COLERIDGE. 83 



nourished the quick and pregnant sensibility she derived 
from her father. 

At the age of six Sara paid a visit to the poet Words- 
worth at Grasmere. Dorothy, the poet's only daughter, 
was at this time very picturesque in her appearance, with 
long, thick, yellow locks, which were never cut, but 
curled with papers, — a thing which seemed not altogether 
in keeping with the poetic simplicity of the household. 
Sara was asked by her father and Miss Wordsworth, the 
poet's sister, if she did not think her very pretty. " No," 
said the child, bluntly ; for which she received a sharp 
rebuff. 

It was her father's wish to have her for a month at 
Grasmere, where he was domesticated with the Words- 
worths. He insisted that she grew rosier and more 
robust during her absences from her over-anxious 
mamma, who, however, did not like to part with her 
only daughter. Perhaps Coleridge's insistence at bottom 
rose from a somewhat selfish motive, a desire to secure 
for himself the treasure of his child's affection. She slept 
with him, and he would tell her fairy stories when he 
came to bed at twelve and one o'clock. What the world 
would give for these fairy stories, if they could but have 
been written down ! 

"I have no doubt," writes Sara, "that there was 
much enjoyment in my young life at that time, but some 
of my recollections are tinged with pain. I think my 
dear father was anxious that I should learn to love him 
and the Wordsworths and their children, and not cling 



84 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



so exclusively to my mother and all around me at home. 
He was therefore much annoyed when, on my mother's 
coming to Allan Bank, I flew to her, and wished not 
to be separated from her any more. I remember his 
showing displeasure to me, and accusing me of want 
of affection. I could not understand why. The young 
Wordsworths came in and caressed him. I sate be- 
numbed ; for truly nothing does so freeze affection as the 
breath of jealousy. The sense that you have done very 
wrong, or at least given great offence, you know not how 
or why — that you are dunned for some payment of love 
or feeling which you know not how to produce or to 
demonstrate on a sudden, chills the heart, and fills it 
with perplexity and bitterness. My father reproached 
me, and contrasted my coldness with the childish 
caresses of the little Wordsworths. I slunk away, and 
hid myself in the wood behind the house ; and there my 
friend John, whom at that time I called my future 
husband, came to seek me." 

Sara Coleridge has recorded some interesting particu- 
lars of the habits of the members of that extraordinary 
little guild, whom Byron christened — not very aptly — 
the Lake Poets. She tells us how she used to watch her 
father and De Quincey pacing up and down the room, 
absorbed in conversation. She understood not, nor 
indeed did she listen to, a word they said, but her eye 
was always attracted by the handkerchief hanging out of 
the pocket behind, and she longed to clutch it. Mr. 
Wordsworth, too, was one of the room-walkers. How 



SARA COLERIDGE. 85 



gravely and earnestly would Coleridge and Wordsworth 
and Southey discuss the affairs of the nation, and solve, 
to their own satisfaction, every problem which they sug- 
gested ! 

Miss Wordsworth, the sister to whose fine taste and 
insight Wordsworth owed so much, is described as of 
most poetic eye and temper, and gentle with the children. 
She told them once a pretty story of a primrose, which 
she spied by the wayside on a visit to Greta Hall soon 
after Sara's birth, though that took place at Christmas, 
and how that same primrose was blooming still when she 
went back to Grasmere. 

Coleridge had his particular feelings and fancies about 
dress ; and so had Wordsworth and Southey. Coleridge 
liked everything feminine and domestic pretty and 
becoming, but not fine-ladyish. Southey was all for gay 
and bright and cheerful colours, and would jestingly 
pretend that he liked even the grand. Wordsworth pre- 
ferred the rich and picturesque. A deep Prussian blue 
or purple was one of his favourite colours for a silk dress. 
He would fain have had white dresses banished, and that 
the peasantry should wear blue and scarlet and other 
warm colours, instead of sombre, dingy black, which 
converts a crowd that might be ornamental in the land- 
scape into a swarm of magnified owls. He said that 
young girls of an evening looked much better with bare 
arms, even if the arms themselves were not very lovely ; 
it gave such a lightness to their general air. White 
dresses he thought cold, — a blot and a discord in any 



86 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



picture, indoor or out-of-door. Coleridge, on the other 
hand, admired white clothing, because he looked at it 
in reference to woman as expressive of her delicacy and 
purity, not merely as a component part of a general 
picture. 

Coleridge had a fancy that his little daughter should 
wear a cap, because he thought it had a girlish and 
domestic look. There must have been a curious con- 
trast between the two poets' children : Dora, with her 
wild eyes, impetuous movements, and fine long floating 
yellow hair ; Sara, with her timid large blue eyes, 
slender form, and a little fair delicate face, muffled up 
in lace border and muslin. 

" I attained my sixth year," she continues, " on the 
Christmas after my first Grasmere visit. It must have 
been the next summer that I made my first appearance 
at the dancing school. All I can remember of this first 
entrance into public is, that our good-humoured, able, 
but rustical dancing-master. Mr. Yewdale, tried to make 
me dance a minuet with Charlie Denton, the youngest 
of our worthy pastor's home flock, a very pretty, rosy- 
cheeked, large black-eyed, compact little laddikin. But 
I was not quite up to the business ; I think my beau was 
a year older. At all events, it was I who broke down, 
and Mr. Yewdale, after a little impatience, gave the 
matter up. All teaching is wearisome ; but to teach 
dancing is of all teaching the wearisomest." 

Her last recollection of her earlier childhood was 
associated with Allonby, which she visited when she was 



SARA COLERIDGE. 87 



nine years old. She well remembered in after life its 
ugliness and meanness, and, what was better, the un- 
broken sweep of its extensive sands. It was delightful 
to look back upon the pleasures of these sands, and of 
the animal and vegetable life which they sustained ; the 
little close white Scotch roses, the shells, the crabs of 
every size, from Lilliputian to Brobdignagian, which 
crawled in the pools ; the sea-anemones with their flower 
like appendages, and the sea-weed with its curious 
berries. All these she bore in memory, but not what 
in later years she would most have cared for, the fine 
forms of the Scotch hills on the opposite coast, looking 
so sublime in the distance, and the splendid sunsets 
which inspired the whole landscape with a mystical 
glory. 

Such, she says, were the chief historical events of the 
first nine years of her life. " But can I in any degree 
retrace what I was then, what relation my then being 
held to my maturer self? Can I draw any useful 
reflection from my childish experience, or found any 
useful maxim upon it ? What was I ? In person very 
slender and delicate, not habitually colourless, but often 
enough pallid and feeble-looking. Strangers used to 
exclaim about my eyes, and I remember remarks made 
upon their large size, both by my uncle Southey and Mr. 
Wordsworth. I suppose the thinness of my face, and 
the smallness of the other features, with the muffling 
close cap, increased the apparent size of the eye ; for 
only artists, since I have grown up, speak of my eyes as 



88 CHILD-LIPE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

large and full. They were bluer, too, in my early years 
than now. My health alternated, as it has done all my 
life, till the last ten or twelve years, when it has been 
unchangeably depressed, between delicacy and a very 
easy, comfortable condition. I remember well that 
nervous sensitiveness and morbid imaginativeness had 
set in with me very early. During my Grasmere visit 
I used to feel frightened at night on account of the dark- 
ness. I then was a stranger to the whole host of night 
agitators — ghosts, goblins, demons, burglars, elves, and 
witches. Horrid ghostly tales and ballads, of which crowds 
afterwards came in my way, had not yet cast their shadows 
over my mind. And yet I was terrified in the dark, 
and used to think of lions, the only form of terror which 
my dark-engendered agitation would take. My next 
bugbear was the Ghost in Hamlet. Then the picture of 
Death at Hill Gate in an old edition of " Paradise Lost," 
the delight of my girlhood. Last and worst came my 
uncle Southey's ballad horrors, especially the Old Woman 
of Berkeley. Oh, the agonies that I have endured between 
nine and twelve at night, before mamma joined me in 
bed, in presence of that hideous assemblage of horrors, 
the horse with eyes of flame ! I dare not, even now, 
rehearse these particulars, for fear of calling up some 
of the old feeling, which, indeed, I have never in my 
life been quite free from. What made the matter worse 
was that, like all other nervous sufferings, it could not 
be understood by the inexperienced ; and consequently 
subjected the sufferer to ridicule and abuse. My uncle 



SARA COLERIDGE. 



Southey laughed heartily at my agonies. I mean at 
the cause : he did not enter into the agonies. Even 
mamma scolded me for creeping out of bed after an 
hoar's torture, and stealing down to her in the parlour, 
saying I could bear the loneliness and the night-fears 
no longer. But my father understood the case better. 
He insisted that a lighted candle should be left in my 
room, in the interval between my retiring to bed and 
mamma's joining me. From that time forth my suffer- 
ings ceased." 

With this incident closes Sara Coleridge's autobio- 
graphy. In her home amid the lakes and mountains she 
grew up in tender sweetness and refinement, like one of 
the exquisite wild flowers of her native vale. Her 
childish prettiness developed first into the maiden bloom 
of fifteen, at which age the painter William Collins refers 
to her as " Coleridge's elegant daughter Sara, a most 
interesting creature." Five years later she ripened into 
the full and perfect beauty of womanhood. Sir Henry 
Taylor, who saw her on a visit to Greta Hall in 1823. 
remarks that he has always been glad he saw her in 
her girlhood, because he then saw her beauty untouched 
by time ; and it was a beauty which could not but linger 
in one's memory for life. The features were perfectly 
shaped, and almost minutely delicate, and the com- 
plexion delicate also, but not wanting in colour. The 
general effect was that of a refined gentleness, and of 
composure even to mildness. Her eyes were large, and 
had the sort of serene lustre which shone in her poet- 



90 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

father's. Some one said of her : " Her father had looked 
down into her eyes, and left in them the light of his 
own." 

Such was Sara Coleridge in her girlhood. Into her 
womanhood it is not my province to follow her. 

Mrs. Somerville. 

In the protracted contest which has raged around the 
question of woman's intellectual relationship to man, 
her comparative strength or weakness, and her fitness 
or unfitness for the higher culture in art, science, or 
literature, the advocates arguing on the woman's side 
have of late found a precious resource in the name of 
Mrs. Somerville. For here was one of the despised sex 
with a brain as strong and clear as that of a Newton or 
a Humboldt, not less capable of investigating the most 
abstruse problems of science, not less skilful in con- 
ducting the most delicate and difficult researches. " It is 
no exaggeration," says Mr. Justin McCarthy,* " to say 
that she distinctly raised the world's estimate of woman's 
capacity for the severest and the loftiest scientific pur- 
suits. She possessed the most extraordinary power of 
concentration, amounting to an entire absorption in the 
subject which she happened to be studying, to the ex- 
clusion of all disturbing sights and sounds. She had 
in a supreme degree that which Carlyle calls the first 
quality of genius — an immense capacity for taking trouble. 

* Justin McCarthy, History of Our Own Time, ii. 376, 377. 



MRS. S0MERV1LLE. 



91 



She had also, happily for herself, an immense capacity 
for finding enjoyment in almost everything : in new 
places, peoples, and thoughts, in the old familiar scenes 
and friends and associations. Hers was a noble, calm, 
fully-rounded life. She worked as steadfastly and as 
eagerly in her scientific studies as Harriet Martineau did 
with her economics and her politics ; but she had a 
more cheery, less sensitive, less eager and impatient 
nature than Harriet Martineau. She was able to pursue 
her most intricate calculations after she had passed her 
ninetieth year ; and one of her chief regrets in dying was 
that she should not " live to see the distance of the 
earth from the sun determined by the transit of Venus, 
and the source of the most renowned of rivers, the 
discovery of which will immortalise the name of Dr 
Livingstone." 

Before I begin my sketch of this great woman's early 
life, will the reader allow me one more quotation ? It 
is a description by her daughter of what this great 
woman, her mother, was in her glorious maturity. " Her 
favourite pursuit, and the one which Nature had chiefly 
designed her, was mathematics ; but her active and 
versatile mind took a delight in almost every subject, 
whether in science or literature, philosophy or politics- 
She was one of the few mathematicians of whom we 
read as having been ' passionately fond of poetry ' : 
her great favourites being Shakespeare and Dante, and 
the Greek dramatists, whose tragedies she read — as they 
must be read if you would get at their real beauty and 



92 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

majesty — in the original. She was very fond of music, 
and painted from Nature with good taste and feeling. 
In the latter recreation she found a special source of 
pleasure, as it led to the frequent contemplation and 
close study of the wonderful beauty of God's visible 
world, — whether she watched the changing effects of light 
and shade on her favourite Roman Campagna, or gazed, 
enchanted, on the gorgeous sunsets which kindle into 
life and glory the beautiful bay of old Parthenon. All 
things of beauty were a joy to her : the flowers her chil- 
dren brought her from their rambles, the seaweeds, 
the birds, all interested and pleased her. Everything 
in Nature spoke to her of that great God who created 
all things, the grand and sublimely beautiful as well 
as the exquisite loveliness of minute objects. Above 
all, in the laws which science unveils step by step, she 
found ever renewed motives for the love and adoration 
of their Author and Sustainer. This fervour of re- 
ligious feeling accompanied her through life, and very 
early she shook off all that was dark and narrow in the 
creed of her first instructors for a purer and a happier 
faith." 

With this portrait of the Woman before us, we may 
proceed to study the growth and development of the 
Girl. 

Mary Fairfax, the daughter of Admiral Sir William 
Fairfax, was born at Jedburgh on the 26th of December, 
1780. When she was between four and five years old. 
her parents took up their residence at Burntisland, a 



MRS. SOMERVILLE. 93 

picturesquely situated seaport town on the coast of Fife, 
just opposite Edinburgh. 

The house in which she spent her happy childhood 
lay to the south of the town ; it was very long, with a 
southern exposure, and its length was increased by a wall 
covered with fruit-trees, which pleasantly concealed a 
courtyard and the usual offices. Thence the garden 
stretched away southward, to terminate in a plot of short 
grass covering a ledge of low black rocks washed by 
the sea. It was divided by narrow and almost unfre- 
quented lanes into three parts, which yielded abundance 
of common fruit and vegetables, but in their warmest 
and best exposures brightened with flowers. The garden 
next to the house was bounded on the south by an ivy- 
clad wall hid by a row of elm-trees. Mary's mother 
was fond of flowers, and prided herself on her moss-roses ; 
and her father, though a sailor, was an excellent florist ; 
so that the child grew up, as all children ought to grow 
up, among green leaves and roses, and fragrant, beautiful 
blooms. And among birds also, — for the grass-plot 
before the house attracted quantities of goldfinches to 
feed upon its thistles and groundsels, — and numerous 
other birds, we may be sure, found a home in the 
oranching, leafy elms. 

And now for two or three childish " recollections," as 
written down by Mrs. Somerville herself: — 

" My mother," she says, " was very much afraid of 
thunder and lightning. She knew when a storm was 
near from the appearance of the clouds, and prepared 

7 



94 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

for it by taking out the steel pins which fastened her 
cap on. She then sat on a sofa, at a distance from 
the fireplace, which had a very high chimney, and read 
different parts of the Bible, especially the sublime 
description of storms in the Psalms, which made me, 
who sat by her, still more afraid. We had an excellent 
and beautiful pointer, called Hero, a great favourite, who 
generally lived in the garden, but at the first clap ot 
thunder he used to rush howling indoors and place his 
face on my knee. Then my father, who laughed not 
a little at our fear, would bring a glass of wine to my 
mother, and say, ' Drink that, Peg ; it will give you 
courage, for we are going to have a rat-tat-too.' My 
mother would beg him to shut the window- shutters, and 
though she could no longer see to read, she kept the 
Bible on her knee for protection. 

" My mother taught me to read the Bible, and to say 
my prayers morning and evening ; otherwise she allowed 
me to grow up a wild creature. When I was seven or 
eight years old I began to be useful, for I pulled the 
fruit for preserving, shelled the peas and beans, fed 
the poultry, and looked after the dairy, for we kept a 
cow. 

" On one occasion I had put green gooseberries into 
bottles and sent them to the kitchen, with orders to the 
cook to boil the bottles uncorked, and, when the fruit 
was sufficiently cooked, to cork and tie up the bottles. 
After a time all the house was alarmed by loud explosions 
and violent screaming in the kitchen ; the cook had 



MRS. SOMERVILLE. 95 



corked the bottles before she boiled them, and of course 
they exploded. For greater preservation, the bottles were 
always buried in the ground , a number were once found 
in our garden with the fruit in high preservation, which 
had been buried no one knew when. Thus experience 
is sometimes the antecedent of science, for it was little 
suspected at that time that by shutting out the air the 
invisible organic world was excluded — the cause of all 
fermentation and decay. 

" I never cared for dolls, and had no one to play with 
me. I amused myself in the garden, which was much 
frequented by birds. I knew most of them, their flight 
and their habits. The swallows were never prevented 
from building above our windows, and, when about to 
migrate, they used to assemble in hundreds on the roof 
of our house, and prepared for their journey by short 
flights. We fed the birds when the ground was covered 
with snow, and opened our windows at breakfast-time 
to let in the robins, who would hop on the table to pick 
up crumbs. The quantity of singing-birds was very 
great, for the farmers and gardeners were less avaricious 
and cruel than they are now — though poorer. They 
allowed our pretty songsters to share in the bounties of 
Providence. The short-sighted cruelty, which is too 
prevalent now, brings its own punishment; for, owing 
to the reckless destruction of birds, the equilibrium of 
nature is disturbed, insects increase to such an extent 
as materially to affect every description of crop." 

Sir William Fairfax, returning from sea-service when 



96 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

his daughter was between eight and nine years old, was 
shocked to find that her education had been almost 
totally neglected, except that spontaneous education, the 
gathering of facts and experiences by a quick and fertile 
mind. She had not been taught to write, and she read 
very indifferently. Her father, to improve her in the 
latter branch, made her read aloud to him every morning, 
after breakfast, besides a chapter of the Bible, a paper 
from the Spectator ; the result of this discipline being 
that for Addison's and Steele's delightful essays she 
acquired a morbid aversion. By accompanying her 
father when he was cultivating his garden, she acquired 
a good deal of practical horticultural knowledge. But 
in all other matters she fell so far behind girls of her 
age and class that her father found it advisable, when 
she was ten years old, to despatch her to a boarding- 
school at Musselburgh. Accustomed to a life of almost 
boundless freedom, Mary Fairfax felt the weight of 
school-discipline as almost intolerable; and being of a 
shy and timid disposition, she suffered keenly from the 
occasional frown of her governess and the laughter and 
jests of her companions. School-life is not always that 
blithe and even jovial period which it is depicted in the 
stories of wonderful schoolboys ; to keen susceptibilities 
it often carries a prolonged sting and torture. Mary's 
clear and original mind fretted, moreover, under the 
tediousness of the stereotyped method of teaching to 
which it was subjected. A hungry little intellect could 
gather scanty manna from the wilderness of Johnson's 



MRS. SOMERVILLE. 97 



Dictionary, or the thorny deserts of the rudiments of 
French and English grammar. 

She remained a year at Musselburgh, and then returned 
to her Burntisland home — very slightly more civilized 
than when she had started on her educational course. 
Soon after her return, she says, " I received a note from 
a lady in the neighbourhood, inquiring for my mother, 
who had been ill. This note greatly distressed me, for 
my half-text writing was as bad as possible, and I could 
neither compose an answer nor spell the words. My 
eldest cousin, a grown-up young lady, then with us, got 
me out of this scrape ; but I soon got myself into another, 
by writing to my brother in Edinburgh that I had sent 
him a bank-knot (note) to buy something for me. The 
school at Musselburgh was expensive, and I was re- 
proached with having cost so much money in vain. My 
mother said she would have been contented if I had 
only learnt to write well and keep accounts, which was 
all that a woman was expected to know." 

Mary Fairfax now made her life one long holiday. 
She roamed about the sands and penetrated into the 
country, developing her faculty of observation, and accu- 
mulating facts the interest and importance of which she 
did not fully recognize until long afterwards. In bad 
weather she sat indoors, and read Shakespeare — a 
glorious occupation, which proved of the greatest service 
to her expanding mind. Among the family collection of 
books she found Mrs. Chapones " Letters to Young 
Women,'' and the course of historical reading recom- 



98 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

mended in it she immediately undertook. The use of 
the globes she learned at this time from the village 
schoolmaster, and her taste for astronomy began to make 
itself manifest. Her bedroom had a southern window, 
and a closet near by a northern ; and at these she spent 
many happy hours, studying the motions of the stars. 

In this wild way she grew up to thirteen, when her 
mother removed to Edinburgh for the winter, and sent 
her to a good writing-school. There she soon learned 
to write a good hand, and studied the elements of arith- 
metic. Back again in Burntisland, she was compelled 
to play four or five hours daily at the piano ; while in 
her leisure she attained to some degree of excellence in 
her drawings. Latin enough to read Caesar's " Commen- 
taries," she taught herself by assiduous application; and 
going on a summer visit to her uncle, Dr. Somerville, at 
Jedburgh, he helped her to translate and understand 
Virgil. Thus, bit by bit, she was enlarging her range 
of knowledge. Every inch of ground was carefully and 
honestly gained and made entirely her own. There was 
no brilliant immaturity, no dazzling but imperfect pre- 
cocity ; the shrewd and strong Scotch intellect went 
leisurely to work, but did its work thoroughly. 

I hope my readers will not be dissatisfied if I borrow 
again from Mrs. Somerville's fascinating pages ; but here 
is a picture of happy girlhood amid the summer-beauties 
of romantic Jedburgh, which it does one good to look 
upon :— r 

"My uncle's house, the manse, in which I was born, 



MRS. SOMERVILLE. 99 



stands in a pretty garden, bounded by the fine ancient 
abbey, which, though partially ruined, still serves as 
the parish-kirk. The garden produced abundance of 
common flowers, vegetables, and fruit. Some of the 
plum and pear trees were very old, and were said to 
have been planted by the monks. Both were excellent 
in quality, and were very productive. The view from 
both garden and manse was over the beautiful narrow 
valley through which the Jed flows. The precipitous 
banks of red sandstone are richly clothed with vegeta- 
tion, some of the trees ancient and very fine, especially 
the magnificent one called the capon tree, and the lofty 
king of the wood, remnants of the fine forests which at 
one time had covered the country. An inland scene 
was new to me, and I was never tired of admiring the 
tree-crowned scaurs or precipices, where the rich glow of 
the red sandstone harmonized so well with the autumnal 
tints of the foliage. 

' ; We often bathed in the pure stream of the Jed. My 
aunt always went with us, and was the merriest of the 
party ; we bathed in a pool which was deep under the 
high scaur, but sloped gradually from the grassy bank 
on the other side. Quiet and transparent as the Jed 
was, it one day came down with irresistible fury, red 
with the debris of the sandstone scaurs. There had 
been a thunderstorm in the hills up-stream, and as soon 
as the river began to rise, the people came out with 
pitchforks and hooks to catch the hay-ricks, sheaves of 
corn, drowned pigs and other animals that came sweep 



ioo CHILD -LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

ing past. My cousins and I were standing on the 
bridge, but my aunt called us off when the water rose 
above the arches, for fear of the bridge giving way. 
We made expeditions every day \ sometimes we went 
nutting in the forest ; at other times we gathered mush- 
rooms on the grass paths of Stewartfield, where there 
was a wood of picturesque old Scotch firs, inhabited by 
a colony of rooks. I still kept the habit of looking 
out for birds, and had the good fortune to see a heron, 
now a rare bird in the valley of the Jed. Some of us 
went every day to a spring called the Allerly well, about 
a quarter of a mile from the manse, and brought a large 
jug of its sparkling water for dinner. The evenings 
were cheerful ; my aunt sang Scotch songs prettily, and 
told us stories and legends about Jedburgh, which had 
been a royal residence in the olden time. She had a 
tame white and tawny-coloured owl ; which we fed 
every night, and sometimes brought into the dining- 
room. The Sunday evening never was gloomy, though 
properly observed." 

From Jedburgh Mary Fairfax went on a visit to 
an uncle in Edinburgh, where she attended lessons in 
dancing, made some progress in writing and arithmetic, 
gained an insight into the politics of the day and became 
heartily Liberal, and formed her first acquaintance with 
the enchanted world of the stage, John Kemble and 
Mrs. Siddons revealing to her spell-bound imagination 
the mysterious depths of Hamlet and Macbeth and 
Othello, At this time the graces occupied a con- 



MRS. SOMERVILLE. 101 

siderable part of her time and energies : so many 
hours a day were devoted to practice at the piano, and 
she learned to love Mozart and appreciate Beethoven ; 
while so many were given to landscape painting under 
Nasmyth. The artist, by a chance remark, turned his 
pupil's attention to mathematical science. She had 
previously ascertained that there was a something, " a 
kind of arithmetic," called Algebra, of the scope and 
character and meaning of which she nothing knew. 
Nor could she find out the way to know, until she over- 
heard Nasmyth say to a pupil who was beginning to 
learn perspective, — "You should study Euclid's Elements 
of Geometry; the foundation not only of perspective, 
but of astronomy and all mechanical science." 

Upon this hint she acted. She was soon the happy 
possessor of "Euclid's Elements of Geometry" and 
Bonnycastle's "Algebra," and with that tenacity of 
purpose which was one of her most marked intellectual 
qualities, though up to this date it had scarcely been 
developed, she resolutely addressed herself to the 
mastery of those abstruse volumes. " I had to take 
part," she writes, " in the household affairs, and to make 
and mend my own clothes. I rose early, played on the 
piano, and painted during the time I could spare in the 
daylight hours, but I sat up very late reading Euclid. 
The servants, however, told my mother ' It was no 
wonder the stock of candles was soon exhausted, for 
Miss Mary sat up reading till a very late hour,' where- 
upon an order was given to take away my candle as 



io2 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

soon as I was in bed. I had, however, already gone 
through the first six books of Euclid, and now I wa 
thrown on my own memory, which I exercised by be 
ginning at the first book, and demonstrating in my mind 
a certain number of problems every night, till I could 
nearly go through the whole. My father came home 
for a short time, and, somehow or other, finding out 
what I was about, said to my mother, — ' Peg, we must 
put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait 
jacket one of these days. There was X., who went 
raving mad about the longitude ! ' " 

Mary Fairfax was filled with a noble ambition to excel 
in some one branch of art or science, concealing in her 
breast the then heterodoxical belief that women were 
capable of taking a higher place in creation than men 
at that day were pleased to assign them. She had not 
as yet discovered the true bent of her genius, and there- 
fore looked to Painting as the road by which she was 
to scale the heights of Fame. She appears to have 
shown both skill and taste in her landscapes; but we 
have reason to be thankful that, instead of sinking into 
an indifferent painter, she became a great mathematician. 

At sixteen, this persevering, patient, and aspiring girl 
was of such rare and delicate beauty, both of face and 
figure, that she was known as the " Rose of Jedwood." 
Her graceful figure was a little below the middle size ; 
her small and shapely head was well set on her finely 
moulded shoulders, and crowned by a profusion of soft 
brown hair ; her eyes were wonderfully bright, and 



MRS. SOMERVILLE. 103 

sparkled with quick intelligence; and her complexion was 
exquisitely pure. She worked hard ; painting, practising 
the piano, pursuing her mathematical studies, sharing in 
the duties of the household, and even making her own 
dresses, — yet did she find time for social courtesies and 
amenities, and was by no means too much of a blue- 
stocking to enjoy the delights of the ball-room. " I was 
fond of dancing " — hear this, ye girl-graduates of Girton 
and Newnham ! — " and never without partners, and often 
came home in bright daylight." 

" Girls," she says, " had perfect liberty at that time in 
Edinburgh; we walked together in Princes Street, the 
fashionable promenade, and were joined by our dancing 
partners. We occasionally gave little supper parties, 
and presented these young men to our parents as they 
came in. At these meetings we played at games, danced 
reels, or had a little music — never cards. After suppei 
there were toasts, sentiments, and songs. There were 
always one or two hot dishes, and a variety of sweet 
things and fruit. Though I was much more at ease in 
society now, I was always terribly put out when asked for 
a toast or a sentiment. Like other girls, I did not dislike 
a little quiet flirtation ; but I never could speak across 
a table, or take a leading part in conversation. This 
diffidence was probably owing to the secluded life I led 
in my early youth. At this time I gladly took part in 
any gaiety that was going on, and spent the day after a 
ball in idleness and gossiping with my friends ; but these 
were rare occasions, for the balls were not numerous, 



104 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



and I never lost sight of the main object of my life, 
which was to prosecute my studies. So I painted at 
Nasmyth's, played the usual number of hours on the 
piano, walked and conversed with my mother in the 
evening ; and as we kept early hours, I rose at daybreak, 
and after dressing, I wrapped myself in a blanket from 
my bed on account of the excessive cold — having no 
fire at that hour — and read Algebra or the Classics till 
breakfast-time. I had, and still have, determined perse- 
verance, but I soon found that it was in vain to occupy 
my mind beyond a certain time. I grew tired, and did 
more harm than good ; so, if I met with a difficult 
point, for example in Algebra, instead of poring over it 
till I was bewildered, I left it, took my work or some 
amusing book, and resumed it when my mind was fresh. 
Poetry was my great resource on these occasions, but 
at a later period I read novels, the ' Old English Baron,' 
the ' Mysteries of Udolpho,' the ' Romance of the Forest,' 
etc. I was very fond of ghost and witch stories, both 
of which were believed in by most of the common 
people, and many of the better educated. I heard an 
old naval officer say that he never opened his eyes after 
he was in bed. I asked him why ? and he replied, ' For 
fear I should see something ! ' Now I did not actually 
believe in either ghosts or witches, but yet, when alone in 
the dead of the night, 1 have been seized with a dread of 
— I know not what. Few people will now understand me 
if I say I was eerie, a Scotch expression for superstitious 
awe. . . . 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 105 



" We returned as usual to Burntisland in spring, and 
my father, who was at home, took my mother and me 
a tour in the Highlands. I was a great admirer of 
Ossian's poems, and viewed the grand and beautiful 
scenery with awe ; and my father, who was of a romantic 
disposition, smiled at my enthusiastic admiration of the 
eagles as they soared above the mountains." 

Mary Fairfax's girlhood soon afterwards terminated. 
We possess, unfortunately, no further or fuller records of 
it, but enough remains to show us how it fitted her for 
her work in after life; what an admirable training it 
supplied for her physical, mental, and moral faculties ; 
how it broadened and deepened her sympathies, and 
fostered her higher aspirations ; how it matured and 
cultivated those noblest qualities of a perfect woman, 

"The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.''' 



Mary Russell Mitford. 

I have always felt that to become a blessing to herself 
and her fellows, a woman's heart must glow with the 
fierce fire of enthusiasm, without which no good deed 
can be done, no great thought taken into the mind to 
germinate and ripen. She must learn to look beyond 
her own personality, to get outside the narrow circle 
of her individual sympathies. She must cherish an 
earnest conviction that our aims and resolves and pur- 
poses will not be cut short with our earthly life, but 



io6 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



extended (as it were) and carried on into the hereafter. 
Then she will gain strength and courage to rise above 
the trials and temptations, the sorrows and weaknesses 
of the world. To raise a lofty standard of duty, and 
to keep up to it all our moral and spiritual nature, is a 
task that we cannot adequately discharge, unless the 
genius of enthusiasm inspires us. For what is enthu- 
siasm but faith ? — faith in the moral government of the 
world, in the ultimate victory of good, in the sacredness 
of truth and beauty. To do our work as all work ought 
to be done, we must fully believe in its dignity and 
importance, we must fully appreciate the value of that 
work's reward in the future. 

A young girl who really and earnestly desires to live 
a true, useful, and worthy life, — a life which shall leave 
behind it some seeds of good, — must place before herself 
an ideal, and labour with all her heart and soul to realise 
it. Of course, it must not be an impossible, an im- 
practicable ideal. Now-a-days the world does not ask 
so much for St. Elizabeths, Jeanne d'Arcs, and Anne 
Askews, as women who, each in their respective spheres, 
will do the duty that lies immediately before them. The 
courage to do right — the willingness to suffer, if need be, 
for the truth, — a generously active interest in the well- 
being of others, — a fine scorn of all that is false, mean, 
and impure, — a brave indifference to social hypocrisies, — 
a deep sense of life's mystery and meaning, — these are 
the great and noble qualities which make up the true 
woman. We read of " heroic women," but every woman 




MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 



MARY RUSSELL MLTFORD. 107 

is heroic who honestly discharges the responsibilities of 
her position. The courage of a Jeanne d'Arc, at the 
head of the troops of France, or of an Ida Pfeiffer, 
trusting herself without escort to the Dyaks of Borneo, is 
surpassed by that of the head of many an humble house- 
hold, fighting day after day, with little hope but strenuous 
endurance, against poverty and disease. If it be true, 
as the poet tells us, that the world knows nothing of its 
greatest men, it is still more true that it knows nothing 
of its greatest martyrs, — of the wives, mothers, sisters, 
daughters, who bear, tearless and without a complaint, 
the burden of their joyless lives, sustained only by the 
enthusiasm of love. There can be no greater mistake 
than to suppose that to be heroic, to live an heroic life, 
we must cross the threshold of the social circle and ven- 
ture into new and strange regions of duty. Frequently, 
as in the case of Mary Russell Mitford, one's family 
offers a battle-field calculated to put to the proof all our 
force of character, firmness of will, and tenacity of purpose. 
Mary Russell Mitford,* the daughter of Dr. Mitford, 
an accomplished young physician, and of his wife, Mary 

* Born 1787 ; died 1855. Wrote the plays of Julian, Foscari, 
and Kienzi; " Belford Regis ;" " Recollections of a Literary Life ;" 
"Atherton and other Tales;" but is chiefly remembered by her 
admirable sketches of rural life and manners in "Our Village." 
Miss Harriet Martineau says : " Her ability was very considerable. 
Her power of description was unique. She had a charming humour, 
and her style was delightful. Yet were her stories read with a relish 
which exceeded even so fine a justification as this — with a relish 
which the judgment could hardly account for ; and their pleasant 

8 



108 CHILD -LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Russell, was born at Alresford on the 22nd of February, 
1787. She was a precocious little genius. At three 
years old she was able to read ; and Dr. Mitford, proud 
of his little daughter's one accomplishment, would often 
perch her on the breakfast-table to exhibit it to admiring 
guests, — whose admiration was all the greater because 
she was a puny child, appearing younger than she was, 
and crowned with a wealth of curls, which made her 
look as if she were twin sister to her own great doll. 
The passages chosen to display her cleverness were 
always taken from the whig newspapers of the day, and 
as these political utterances necessarily wearied her, 
her mother afterwards gratified her and repaid her by 
reciting "The Children of the Wood." 

From " The Children of the Wood " she proceeded to 
form an acquaintance with the ballad treasures of Bishop 
Percy's " Reliques of Ancient British Poetry." These 
did much to stimulate her love of poetry, and to give a 
bias to her early taste. She grew so fond of them that, 
before she could read them herself, her father — a 

compelled enjoyment was, no doubt, ascribable to the glow of good 
spirits and kindliness which lighted up and warmed everything that 
her mind produced. She may be considered as the representative 
of household cheerfulness in the humbler range of the literature of 
fiction." Another reason for the popularity of Miss Mitford's tales 
and sketches is, I am sure, their strong rural flavour. They breathe 
the air of the hayfields and the scent of the hawthorn boughs. There 
is nothing artificial about them, nothing of the conventional pas- 
toral ; they are native, and to the manner born, and every page is 
fresh with the sweet breezes which blow over ripened cornfields or 
daisied meadows. 



MARY RUSSELL MIT FORD. 109 

supremely selfish man, but able to deny nothing to his 
little girl — partly, perhaps, because the denial would 
have involved some trouble — was coaxed into placing 
the volume in the hands of her nurse, that they might 
be read to her whenever she wished. "The breakfast- 
room," she writes, "where I first possessed myself of 
my beloved ballads, was a lofty and spacious apartment, 
literally lined with books, which, with its Turkey carpet, 
its glowing fire, its sofas and its easy chairs, seemed, 
what indeed it was, a very nest of English comfort. The 
windows opened on a large old-fashioned garden, full of 
old-fashioned flowers, stocks, honeysuckles, and pinks." 
The love which Mary Russell Mitford there acquired for 
the "old-fashioned flowers " she retained to the last day 
of her life. It grew with her growth and strengthened 
with her strength, and in her home she delighted to 
surround herself with them. 

In this delightful Eden the child, however, was not 
long permitted to dwell. Her father's extravagance and 
carelessness had dissipated his wife's fortune, with the 
exception of about ,£3,500 in funded property, which 
was placed beyond his reach in the hands of trustees ; 
and when Mary Russell Mitford was about six years old 
he was compelled to sell his furniture and library and 
remove from Alresford. For a year he resided at Lyme 
Regis, and afterwards proceeded to London, where in 
1795 he was living, with his wife and children, on the 
Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, in order to escape from 
his creditors within the rules of the King's Bench. Ruin 



no CHjLD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

seemed to stare them in the face, when the family expe- 
rienced an extraordinary illustration of the changefulness 
of Fortune. He was suddenly raised again to a position 
of affluence by a prize in the lottery. A few weeks 
before, Dr. Mitford had taken his little girl with him, out 
of some superstition about luck, to the lottery-office to 
choose the number he should purchase. From a heap 
of tickets on the table before her, she selected 2,224. It 
was found not a very easy matter to procure this ticket, 
for it had been divided into shares, all of which had not 
been taken by the same office. However, the child 
could not be persuaded or coaxed into giving up her first 
choice, and her father, full of superstitious ideas about 
luck, resolved on procuring the whole ticket. The six- 
teenth, on which she had set her heart, she carried home 
with her, and the remaining shares were bought up from 
different offices at an advanced price. For once " the 
game " was worth " the candle " ; the ticket carried off 
the highest prize of the lottery ; and Dr. Mitford became 
the happy recipient of ,£20,000. He at once declared 
that it was his daughter's, and upon his daughter should 
it be settled; but he resumed his old style of living, — 
taking a large house at Reading, and keeping his phaeton, 
his spaniels, and his greyhounds, — and in the course of 
a few years dissipated the daughter's fortune as he had 
done her mother's and his own He was incorrigible in 
his selfish extravagance, and trod the road to ruin with a 
gay expansion of heart, as if not a cloud hovered over 
the future. 



MARY RUSSELL MIT FORD. 



Mary Russell Mitford, when in her eleventh year, was 
sent to school in Hans Place, Chelsea. The establish- 
ment was under the direction of a Mons. and Madame 
St. Quintin, who managed it upon an excellent system, 
and turned out their pupils fairly well educated and full) 
accomplished. Those who chose to learn had every 
opportunity afforded them of doing so ; and the instruc- 
tion was so intelligently given that it inspired most of the 
pupils with a love of reading and a taste for literature. 
There were three vacations in the year, and before the 
pupils were dismissed a little festival was celebrated on 
each occasion. At Midsummer the prizes were dis- 
tributed, not only for proficiency in study, but also for 
general good conduct. Before they went home at Easter 
or Christmas a ballet or a dramatic performance would 
be given. If the former, the sides of the schoolroom 
were filled up with bowers, in which the juvenile danseuses 
were seated ; thence, at a signal from M. Duval, the 
dancing-master, they sallied forth, attired as sylphs or 
shepherdesses, and executed their various mazy evolu- 
tions. If the latter, the room was temporarily converted 
into a theatre, and a certain number of the pupils enacted 
a moral drama, such as Hannah More's Search after 
Happiness. 

Mary Mitford was of a scrofulous temperament, 
and in her early years suffered much from illness. In 
person she was short and, it must frankly be said, fat. 
Her features were good, and the expression of her 
countenance was intelligent and amiable ; she could lay 



ii2 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

no claim, however, to good looks. With all these dis- 
advantages, she was far from unattractive. " She showed 
in her countenance, and in her mild self-possession, that 
she was no ordinary child ; and with her sweet smile, 
her gentle temper, her animated conversation, her keen 
enjoyment of life, and her incomparable voice — 'that 
excellent thing in woman ' — there were few of the 
prettiest children of her age who won so much love and 
admiration from their friends, whether young or old, as 
little Mary Mitford." 

She applied herself to her studies with the patience 
and the energy which ensure success. French, Italian, 
history, geography, astronomy, music, singing, drawing, 
dancing, failed to satisfy her eager thirst for instruction j 
and in emulation of her governess, she began to learn 
Latin. She wrote to her mother : " I have just taken a 
lesson in Latin ; but I shall, in consequence, omit some 
of my other business. It is so extremely like Italian, 
that I think I shall find it much easier than I expected." 
Her parents did not look favourably on this addition to 
their daughter's curriculum. " Your mother and myself." 
writes Dr. Mitford, '" have had much conversation con- 
cerning the utility of your learning Latin, and we both 
agree that it is perfectly unnecessary, and would occasion 
you additional trouble. It would occupy more of your 
time than you could conveniently appropriate to it ; 
and we are more than satisfied with your application 
and proficiency in everything." But Mary carried her 
point, and continued to learn Latin, while she danced 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 113 

in the ballets and performed in the plays with un- 
bounded energy. 

Of the ardour with which she threw herself into the 
competition for prizes, we gain some idea from a letter 
written by Mrs. Mitford to her husband during a brief 
sojourn in London (June, 1802). "Mezza [a pet name 
for their daughter], who has got her little desk here and 
her great dictionary, is hard at her studies beside me. 
On account of the warmth of the weather, she has omitted 
her dancing lesson this morning. Her little spirits are 
all abroad to obtain the prize, sometimes hoping, some- 
times desponding. It is as well, perhaps, you are not 
here at present, as you would be in as great a fidget on 
the occasion as she is." She appears to have had great 
success as a prize-taker. " You would have laughed 
yesterday, 1 ' writes the loving wife and mother, - ' when 
M. St. Quintin was reading Mary's English composi- 
tion, of which the subject was, ' The advantage of a 
well -cultivated mind ; ' a word struck him as needless 
to be inserted, and which, after objecting to it, he was 
going to expunge. Mam Bonette [another pet name], 
in her pretty meek way, urged the necessity of it. 
Miss Rowden was then applied to. She and I both 
asserted that the sentence would be incomplete without 
it, and that there must be a further alteration in the 
sentence if the poor disputed particle was dismissed. 
St. Quintin, on a more deliberate view, of the subject, 
with all the liberality which is so amiable a point 
in his character, begged our daughter's pardon, and 



ii 4 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the passage remained as it originally stood." Maria 
Victoria ! 

She spent five years at M. St. Quintal's, and during 
that period maintained a constant correspondence with 
her parents ; a correspondence remarkable for the sym- 
pathy, openness and equality displayed on both sides. 
The daughter freely gives her opinions of the persons 
she meets and the books she reads ; relates the little 
events that make up the daily lives of herself and her 
companions, with the full assurance that whatever 
interests her will interest her correspondents ; and she 
puts forward her demands with a perfect conviction 
that they will obtain immediate compliance. In like 
manner the parents repeat all the gossip of their little 
circle, and record whatever takes place at home and 
abroad of which they had any cognizance. Here are a 
few extracts, in which the reader will not fail to notice 
the accuracy and ease of language : — 

(Sept. T5th, 1799.) 
" My dear Papa, — I sit down in order to return you 
thanks for the parcels I received. My uncle called 
on me twice while he stayed in London, but he went 
away in five minutes both times. He said that he only 
went to fetch my aunt, and would certainly take me out 
when he returned. I hope that I may be wrong in my 
opinion of my aunt ; but I again repeat, I think she 
has the most hypocritical drawl that I ever heard. Pray, 
my dearest papa, come soon to see me. I am quite 



MARY RVSSELL MIT J ORD. 115 

miserable without you, and have a thousand things to 
say to you. I suppose that you will pass almost all 
your time at Odiham this season, as it is a very good 
country for sporting; and that family is so agreeable, 
that it would be very pleasant for mamma to stay there 
with you." 

(Feb. 23rd, 1 80 1.) "I really think that my dearly- 
beloved mother had better have the jackasses than the 
cart-horses. The former will at least have the recom- 
mendation of singularity, which the other has not ; as 
I am convinced that more than half the smart carriages 
in the neighbourhood of Reading are drawn by the 
horses which work in the team." 

(Aug. 20th, 1802.) "I told you that I had finished 
the Iliad, which I admired beyond anything I ever 
read. I have begun the ^Eneid, which I cannot say I 
admire so much. Dryden is so fond of triplets and 
Alexandrines, that it is much heavier reading; and, 
though he is reckoned a more harmonious versifier 
than Pope, some of his lines are so careless that I shall 
not be sorry when I have finished it. I shall then read 
the Odyssey. I have already gone through three books, 
and shall finish it in a fortnight. Drawing, music, and 
Italian are going on extremely well, particularly the 
litter. I am now reading that beautiful opera of 
Metastasio, ' Themistocles ' ; and, when I have finished 
that, I shall read Tasso's 'Jerusalem Delivered.' How 
you would dote on Metastasio, my sweet Tod ! [a pet 
name for her father]. His poetry is really heavenly. 



n6 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

French letters and English composition go on likewise 
extremely well. I have written one English composi- 
tion on ' Balloons,' and another on ' Amiable Manners.' 
I have not shown the latter. The former, M. St. 
Quintin said was extremely well done." 

(August 24th, 1802.) "I am glad my sweet mamma 
agrees with me with regard to Dryden, as I never liked 
him as well as Pope. Miss Rowden had never read any 
translation of Virgil but his, and consequently could not 
judge of their respective merits. If we can get Wharton's 
^Eneid, we shall finish it with that. After I have read 
the Odyssey, I believe I shall read Ovid's Metamor- 
phoses. I shall be very glad of this, as I think they 
are extremely beautiful. ... I am much obliged to you 
for saying that I need not learn dancing, as it is really 
my aversion . . . Send me by papa a volume of Meta- 
stasio unbound, which I left at home. I am much 
flattered, my darlings, by the praises you bestowed on 
my last letter, though I have not the vanity to think I 
deserve them. It has ever been my ambition to write 
like my darlings, though I fear I shall never attain their 
style." 

[The writer was at this time in her fifteenth year.] 
(August 30th, 1802.) " All things go on well. M. St. 
Quintin was perfectly delighted with my French letter 
on Saturday. Miss Gray says that I shall play and 
sing very well, and that I improve amazingly. Signor 
Parachiretti is sure I shall know Italian as well as I do 
French by Christmas. I know you will not think that 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 117 

it is through vanity that I say this, who should not say 
it ; but I well know you like to hear that your darling 
is doing well, and I consult more your gratification than 
false modesty in relating it to you. I went to the library 
the other day with Miss Rowden, and brought back the 
first volume of Goldsmith's ' Animated Nature.' It is 
quite a lady's natural history, and extremely entertaining. 
The style is easy and simple, and totally free from 
technical terms, which are generally the greatest objec- 
tion to books of that kind. The only fault is its length. 
There are eight volumes of it. But as I read it to 
myself, and read pretty quick, I shall soon get through 
it. I am likewise reading the Odyssey, which I even 
prefer to the Iliad. I think it beautiful beyond com- 
parison." 

The reader should compare these letters with Miss 
Mitford's more mature epistles — her communications with 
her many friends in later years, and they will be interested 
in observing that the easy gossiping lively style is always 
the same, and there is the same lively chat about books 
and things. 

At the close of the year 1802, and the age of fifteen, 
Miss Mitford left school, having learned, I suspect, as 
much as her teachers could teach her on the subjects 
she preferred and assiduously studied. The remaining 
years of her girlhood were spent at Bertram House, — 
a pretty residence which Dr. Mitford had built near 
Reading, — in tranquil seclusion. Her father, always 
placing his own pleasure before that of the two loving 



n8 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



creatures who so blindly worshipped him, was absent in 
London on long and frequent visits ; and Mary and her 
mother were thrown upon their own resources. So they 
remained at home, and received visits ; or went out in 
the green chariot, and returned them. They drove into 
Reading after their social duties were discharged, to do 
their shopping, and collect the news of the neighbour- 
hood ; and when this labour was over, and they found 
themselves again by their own fireside, the daughter 
would lie for hours together on the sofa, with her dog by 
her side, reading whatever book chance had thrown into 
her hands. Her biographer tells us that the number of 
books she read is almost incredible. A catalogue of 
them has been preserved in Mrs. Mitford's handwriting, 
from the ist of January, 1806, to the end of 181 1 ; and 
for the first month of 1806 it gives a total of fifty-five 
volumes. I regret to say that this total includes fifty-three 
volumes of fiction. Undoubtedly, as Mr. L'Estrange re- 
marks, the young lady must have consumed a great deal 
of trash. He adds, " There are some constitutions with 
which nothing seems to disagree; and probably there 
was none of those works from which she did not derive 
some advantage. If she met with nothing good to 
imitate, she at least learned to see what was bad and to 
be avoided.'' This is an excuse, however, which I am 
not inclined to accept. It is true that Miss Mitford read 
a great deal of trash, and the time so occupied must 
be regarded as time wasted. It would have been better 
for her if she had read less trash and more solid litera- 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 



19 



ture ; and at all events, her example is not one to be 
imitated or admired, for there can be few intellectual 
digestions capable of assimilating so much flatulent and 
innutritious food. 

The story of Miss Mitford's girlhood here comes to 
an end. That of her womanhood is equally simple and 
uneventful ; and both present her to us in a pleasing and 
favourable light, as a devoted daughter, sacrificing her 
life to the comfort and convenience of parents who by 
no means deserved so great a daughter ; as a true and 
gentle friend ; and as a woman of kindly heart and sweet 
disposition, with rare powers of observation and a refined 
literary taste. 

As epilogue, I transcribe almost the last lines she 
wrote — lines traced with failing fingers only ten days 
before she died. They are animated by the same blithe- 
some and genial spirit as the letters which she dashed off 
with fluent pen in the radiant days of her child-life : — - 

" It has pleased Providence," she writes,* " to preserve 
to me my calmness of mind, clearness of intellect, and 
also my power of reading by day and by night; and r 
which is still more, my love of poetry and literature, my 
cheerfulness, and my enjoyment of little things. This 
very day, not only my common pensioners, the dear 
robins, but a saucy troop of sparrows, and a little shining 
bird of passage, whose name I forget, have all been 
pecking at once at their tray of bread-crumbs outside the 



On January. 7, 185; 



120 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

window. Poor pretty things ! how much delight there is 
in those common objects, if people would but learn to 
enjoy them ; and I really think that the feeling for these 
simple pleasures is increasing with the increase of educa- 



Sydney, Lady Morgan. 

It is believed that Lady Morgan was born in 1778. 
Her father, Robert MacO wen, was an Irishman ; and 
her mother, Miss Hill, an Englishwoman. The Mac- 
Owens professed to be of Norman descent, and to have 
settled in Connaught in the reign of Elizabeth. In spite 
of his high lineage, Sydney's father, — a handsome man, 
with a good deal of Celtic vivacity in his blood, — was only 
the steward and sub-agent of an Irish landholder, until 
his theatrical tastes drew him to London, where his 
kinsman, Oliver Goldsmith, introduced him to Garrick, 
and softening his name into Owenson, he went on the 
stage. As an actor, especially in Irish parts, he became 
popular ; while his wit and personal graces recommended 
him to the favour of Miss Hill, whom he married. Their 
first child, the future Lady Morgan, received the name 
of Sydney in honour of Sir Henry Sydney, who was Lord 
Deputy of Ireland when the MacOwens bestowed upon 
it the distinction of their residence. The married 
couple, with their daughter, led for some time a nomadi c 
life, shifting from town to town as engagements offered. 
At length they appeared in Dublin, where Owenson 
opened what, with true Irish grandiloquence, he desig- 




LADY MORGAN. 



SYDNEY, LADY MORGAN. 



nated the National Theatre, tor the special encourage- 
ment of native talent. Native talent did not respond to 
the encouragement ; the National Theatre was soon shut 
up, and its sanguine projector sank into the deputy 
managership of the Theatre Royal. Afterwards he 
performed successively at Castlebar, Sligo, and Athlone, 
together with his diminutive but precocious daughter, 
who, in 1788, figured in the playbills as the "Infant 
Prodigy." 

" I well remember," writes a certain Dr. Burke, " the 
pleasure with which I saw Owenson personate Major 
O'Flaherty in Cumberland's then highly popular comedy 
the West Indian ; and I also well remember that the 
long afterwards widely famed Lady Morgan performed 
at the same time with her father, either in the West 
Indian or an after-piece. This took place at Castlebar, 
and their reception was enthusiastic in the extreme." 

Mrs. Owenson died while still in her young woman- 
hood, leaving two daughters, Sydney and Olivia, over 
whom their father watched with the most vigilant care 
and unremitting tenderness. Twice a day he accom- 
panied them on a walk into the country. At home they 
were his constant companions ; and it is only just to 
say that they profited much by his conversation, which 
was that of a man gifted with good natural parts, and 
possessed of an extensive knowledge of men and manners. 
Sydney was educated at a respectable school in Dublin, 
conducted by a Miss Crowe, and afterwards at one of 
higher pretensions, Clontarf House, superintended by a 

Q 



122 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Madame Terson. Of her introduction into the latter 
establishment she furnishes a lively account : — 

" Madame Terson led us into a spacious room of very 
scholastic appearance, with desks and books and benches, 
backboards and stocks. The windows of the farther 
end looked on the sea. There was no one in the room 
except two little girls, the daughters of the illustrious 
Grattan, apparently about our own age, and curiously 
dressed, as though they belonged to some order. They 
sat, with their hands clasped together, at the farthest 
window. 

" Madame Terson put our hands into theirs, and told 
us she would order some fruit and bonbons ; she said the 
young ladies, who were now out walking, would soon be 
back and cheer us up. She then went away. The two 
little girls looked at us sulkily and shyly ; the eldest 
haughtily. 

■' We said nothing because we had nothing to say. 

" The eldest, at length, broke silence with the simple 
question, ' What is your name ? ' 

" I answered, ' Sydney Owenson.' 

" ' My name/ continued my interrogator, ' is Grattan 
— Mary Anne Grattan — and,' looking very grand, ( my 
papa is the greatest man in Ireland What is your 
papa ? ' 

" The question puzzled me, and I did not reply. On 
her reiteration of the inquiry, I replied, ' My papa is free 
of the six and ten per cents.' 

" The answer stunned her, for she understood it no 



SYDNEY LADY MORGAN. 123 

more than I did myself, but probably thought it an order 
of unknown magnificence." 

Sydney Morgan, like most clever girls, to a large extent 
educated herself ; and I am disposed to think that of all 
modes of education self- education is the best. She read 
every book that fell in her way ; and a strong memory 
enabled her to retain the good which her quick intel- 
ligence taught her to appreciate. She acquired some 
knowledge of French ; and early manifested a taste for 
the flowery paths of literature. She invented short tales ; 
she wove together her simple rhymes ; and sat up o' nights 
by the kitchen fire, musing and composing until the 
dying embers recalled her to prosaic realities. Her 
father's limited means compelled her to make an effort 
at self-support ; and while still in her teens, she entered 
the family of Mr. Featherstonehaugh, of Bracklin Castle, 
as governess. Previously she had issued, under the 
patronage of the Countess of Moira, a volume of juvenile 
compositions, entitled " Poems of a Young Lady," which 
was published in London, by Sir Richard Phillips, of St. 
Paul's Churchyard. This introduced her to the literary 
and fashionable society of Dublin; where her wit, her 
animal spirits, and her charming conversation soon made 
her popular. Her reputation was increased by the pub- 
lication, in 1801, of "St. Clair," her first novel ; it was, 
without doubt, a performance of some promise. The 
characters are mere shadows ; the plot and the scenes 
are improbabilities ; but there is much liveliness in the 
descriptive passages, and the style has often quite a glow 



124 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of eloquence. The medley of quotations and criticisms 
betrays some crudeness of taste, but it testifies also to 
the extent and variety of the young authoress's reading. 

An engagement as governess at Nenagh House 
opened up to her a still wider social circle. She writes : 
— " The other night we were at an immense rout at 
Lady Clonbrock's, to whom I owe so many obligations 
for her marked attention to me since my residence here 
that I am at a loss how to mention them. It was quite 
a musical party, and (give me joy), on the decision of 
Lord Norbury (who was of the party), I bore away the 
palm from all their Italian music by the old Irish airs of 
'• Ned of the Hills," and the " Cooleen," to which I had 
adapted words, and I was interrupted three times by 
plaudits in "The Soldier Tired." Now, I know you 
will all laugh at me, but the people here are setting me 
mad, and so you must bear up with the effects of it for 
a little while, until I become accustomed to the applause 
of the great." Sydney Owenson liked society, and 
society in return liked Sydney Owenson. There is 
generally this cordial sympathy between society and its 
favourites. She was in many respects well qualified to 
become a social attraction. Her musical taste was 
excellent ; and her voice fresh and sweet, though not 
powerful, nor of extended range. Its great charm was 
its expressiveness. She sang Irish melodies as only an 
Irish girl can sing them, and played on the harp with a 
good deal of taste and effect. The frankness of her 
manners had in it something engaging, and even her 



SYDNEY, LADY MORGAN. 125 

disregard of conventionalities was pleasant and piquant 
to those who were their unhappy slaves. Witty, in the 
higher sense, she was not; but as she was a pretty 
woman, the ease and glitter of her conversation passed 
for wit. A pretty woman she undeniably was ; her fea- 
tures were well formed and her eyes dark and luminous ; 
the smile on her face was as bright as the sunshine on 
the lake of Killarney; and her brow was radiant with 
intelligence. Though she was slightly deformed, she 
was graceful and easy in her movements ; she danced 
with a quaint vivaciousness that was all her own; and 
dressed with an originality which enhanced and com- 
pleted her fascinating influence. 

A final glimpse of this "wild Irish girl" we obtain 
in one of her letters, dated January 1803 : "I must 
tell you," she writes, " that I am ambitious, far, far 
beyond the line of laudable emulation — perhaps beyond 
the power of being happy. Yet the strongest point of 
my ambition is to be every inch a woman. Delighted 
with the pages of ' La Voisine,' I dropped the study of 
Chemistry, though urged to it by a favourite friend and 
protector, lest I should be less the woman. Seduced 
by taste, and a thousand arguments, to Greek and Latin, 
I resisted, lest I should not be a very woman. And I 
have studied music rather as a sentiment than as a 
science, and drawing as an amusement rather than as an 
art y lest I should have become a musical pedant or a 
masculine artist." 

It was unfortunate for Sydney Owenson that her 



[26 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



girlhood was not surrounded by any high and holy 
influences, or animated by any noble motive or exalted 
purpose. For hence it came to pass that the woman- 
hood of Lady Morgan was deficient in dignity and 
soberness, and brightened by no lofty aim. 



I2 7 



CHAPTER II. 

THE TWELVE DAYS' QUEEN: LADY JANE GREY— 
A PURITAN LADY: MRS. HUTCHINSON 



W 



Lady Jane Grey.* 

HEN the hapless daughter of Dudley, Duke of 
Northumberland — the Twelve Days' Queen, and 
the victim of her father's ill-regulated ambition — offered 
up her fair young life upon the scaffold at Tower Hill, 
she was still in her " teens " — still with the simplicity 
and freshness of girlhood upon her, and though a wife, 
scarcely yet a woman.f The story of Lady Jane Grey 

* Born 1536 ; beheaded at Tower Hill 1554. 

f " Seventeen — and knew eight languages — in music 

Peerless — her needle perfect, and her learning 

Beyond the Churchmen ; yet so meek, so modest, 

So wife-like humble to the trivial boy 

Mismatched with her for policy ! I have heard 

She would not take a last farewell of him ; 

She feared it might unman him for his end. 

She could not be unmanned — no, nor outwoman ? d 

Seventeen —a rose of grace ! 

Girl never breathed to rival such a rose ; 

Rose never blew that equalled such a bud." 

Tennyson, Queen Mary. 



[28 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



has been so often told that I should refrain from repeating 
it in these pages but for a fear lest I should be accused 
of the old mistake, — of omitting " Hamlet the Dane " 
from the play of Hamlet. And it may, perhaps, be 
pleaded that there is a tender and pathetic beauty about 
the tragic tale which no repetition can wholly dim or 
wear off, and that it is one of those sad but fascinating 
episodes in the darker chapters of history, of which none 
of us ever weary. 

The reader needs not to be told that she was the 
eldest daughter of Henry Grey, third Marquis of Dorset, 
by his second wife, Lady Frances Brandon. She was 
therefore allied with royal blood, her mother being the 
eldest daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, 
by Mary Tudor, widow of Louis XII. of France, and 
second daughter of our Henry VII. She came also of 
royal stock on the father's side ; her paternal great-great- 
grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, having had for her 
second husband, Edward IV 

Her father, the Marquis of Dorset, was a wealthy and 
influential nobleman, who, in 1551, was raised to the 
dukedom of Suffolk. He was a man with some taste for 
letters, and a sincere adherent of the Reformed Church. 

It is a curious fact that the date of the birth of this 
noble lady is not exactly known ; but, according to 
Fuller, it took place in 1536, at her father's stately 
mansion of Bradgate, near Leicester. She was the eldest 
of three daughters, Jane, Katherine, and Mary; her 
parents were without male issue. At a very early age 



\ 



LADY JANE GREY. 129 

her budding gifts and graces gave abundant promise of 
a fair and dignified womanhood ; so gentle was her 
disposition, so serene her temper, so great her intellectual 
pregnancy, and so remarkable her love of knowledge. 
She was fortunate in living at a time when the education 
of women was as comprehensive and exact as that of 
men ; and her father provided her with two learned 
tutors in his two chaplains, Thomas Harding and John 
Aylmer. To the latter she seems to have been more 
particularly given in charge ; and the teacher being as 
zealous as the pupil was diligent, Lady Jane soon gained 
a thorough acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and also 
some degree of proficiency in Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaic, 
French, and Italian. 

These grave and serious studies were relieved by a 
cultivation of the graces. Her voice was melodious, 
and she sang with much skill and expression; on various 
musical instruments she was an effective performer. Her 
achievements in needlework and embroidery excited the 
admiration of her contemporaries ; she acquired a know- 
ledge of the medical properties of herbs ; dainty dishes, 
preserves, and " sweet waters " she concocted with 
dexterous hand ; her caligraphy was a marvel of ease 
and elegance : in this last-named art she was instructed 
by the erudite Roger Ascham, who was one of its most 
famous professors. Thus it happened that even in her 
early girlhood she surpassed in general scholarship hei 
equals in age and station, and was frequently held up 
as a model and an example to the young Prince Edward. 



130 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

But her tutors did not forget the spiritual side of her 
educacion, and she was well grounded in the principal 
dogmas of the Church, as well as in the truths and 
lessons embodied in the life and teaching of her Lord. 

After the death of Henry VI II., the Lady Jane went 
to reside with the widowed queen, Katherine Parr, at 
Chelsea; and when that lady somewhat precipitately 
married Lord Seymour of Dudley, she accompanied 
them to Hanworth, in Middlesex, one of Henry VIII. 's 
favourite palaces, which he had bestowed upon Queen 
Katherine in dower. She did not long survive her 
second nuptials, but died at Dudley Castle, September 
5th, 1548, in the 36th year of her age. Lady Jane acted 
as chief mourner at the funeral. 

It was soon after this event that Lady Jane addressed 
the following letter to the Lord High Admiral. As the 
composition of a girl of twelve, it shows no ordinary 
promise : — 

" October 1st, 1548. 

" My duty to your lordship, in most humble wise 
remembered, with no less thanks for the gentle letters 
which I received from you. Thinking myself so much 
bound to your lordship for your great goodness towards 
me from time to time, that I cannot by any means be 
able to recompense the least part thereof, I purposed to 
write a few rude lines unto your Jordship, rather as a 
token to show how much worthier I think your lordship's 
goodness than to give worthy thanks for the same ; and 



LADY JANE GREY. 131 

these my letters shall be to testify unto you that, like as 
you have become towards me a loving and kind father, 
so I shall be always most ready to obey your godly 
monitions and good instructions, as becometh one upon 
whom you have heaped so many benefits. And thus, 
fearing lest I should trouble your lordship too much, I 
must humbly take my leave of your good lordship. 
" Your humble servant during my life, 

" Jane Grey/ 

Lord Seymour, a man of loose habits and violent 
temper, was by no means the guardian to whom any 
prudent parents would desire to entrust a young, fair, 
and accomplished daughter. The Marquis was solicitous, 
therefore, that Lady Jane should return to the peace 
and security of her own home. One might naturally 
suppose that such a wish would command immediate 
fulfilment ; yet it was with reluctance, and only after an 
urgent correspondence, that the Lord Admiral could be 
prevailed upon to part with her. His ambition was 
unbounded, and as her parents would seem to have 
promised him the disposal of their daughter's hand, — 
a prize in the hazardous lottery of his fortunes, and one 
by which he hoped to purchase his way to power, — he 
grudged her removal from his influence. After having 
consented to her return, he used the most strenuous exer- 
tions to reclaim her ; in which he ultimately succeeded 
by undertaking to betroth her to King Edward, and 
by bribing the Marquis with a large sum of money. 



I can find no evidence of any serious intention on his 
part to effect an alliance between her and the young 
king ; but there is reason to believe that he designed to 
marry her to his heir, the Lord Hertford, son of his 
brother, the Protector, Duke of Somerset. It has also 
been suggested that he may have intended, if his suit 
to the Princess Elizabeth failed, to have married her 
himself, and have made her royal descent an instrument 
in carrying out his schemes of personal aggrandisement. 
Thus, even at this early period of her life, the amiable 
and unfortunate girl seemed marked out by an evil 
destiny to be the victim of ambition, — to see her fine 
gifts and radiant promise checked and blighted by the 
dark intrigues of selfish ambition. 

It is not impossible that at Bradgate Lady Jane may 
have regretted the indulgent ease and splendid hospitality 
of Dudley Castle. Her parents acted upon the maxim 
that to spare the rod is to spoil the child ; and notwith- 
standing her amiability and honourable diligence, sub- 
jected her to a very severe discipline. She was rigorously 
punished for the slightest defect in her behaviour or the 
most trivial failure in her studies. Her parents taught 
her to fear, rather than to love them ; and insisted upon 
reverence, rather than affection, as the duty of children 
towards those who gave them birth. It is no wonder, 
therefore, that from the austere brow and unsympathetic 
voice she turned with ever-increasing delight towards 
that secret spirit of knowledge, which has only celestial 
smiles for its assiduous votaries. In the pages of the 



LADY JANE GREY. 133 

wise she met with divine words of encouragement and 
consolation : they soothed her sorrows, they taught her 
the heroism of endurance, they lifted her into that 
serene and passionless realm where dwelt the Immortals, 
— the glorious minds of old. "Thus," says she, "my 
book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily 
to me more and more pleasure, that in respect of it all 
other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and troubles 
unto me." 

That is a fine saying of Milton's, — " A good book is 
the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and 
treasured up on purpose for a life beyond life." Of 
how many humble and unhappy souls does it become 
the joy, the solace, and the inspiration ! What a 
brightness does it pour upon the darkest and dreariest 
time ! How sweet a music steals from it into the 
suffering and melancholy soul ! Let the pitiless winds 
rage without ; let the clouds gather and the thunder 
peal ; let the wild waves break in anger on the desolate 
shore ; for in my books I find a brighter, a happier 
world, where neither storm nor thunder nor shipwreck 
afflicts the souls of men. They transport me into a 
land of sweet dreams and radiant visions ; they make 
me the associate of stainless celestial spirits ; they fill 
me with a happiness which is beyond the reach of 
chance and change. 

From an interesting passage in Roger Ascham's 
" Schoolmaster," we can form some idea of the melan- 
choly girlhood of this daughter of a royal race. Ascham 



■34 



CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



visited Bradgate in the summer of 1550, on his way to 
London. He found, on his arrival, the stately mansion 
deserted ; the Lord and Lady, with all their household, 
were hunting merrily in the park to the music of horn 
and hound. Making his way through the deserted 
chambers, he came at length upon a secluded apart- 
ment, where the fair Lady Jane was calmly studying 
the divine pages of Plato's immortal Phczdon in the 
original Greek. Surprised and delighted by a spectacle 
so unusual, the worthy scholar, after the usual saluta- 
tions, inquired why she had not accompanied the gay 
lords and ladies in the park, to enjoy the pastime of 
the chase. 

" I wis," she replied, smiling, " all their sport in the 
park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in 
Plato. Alas ! good folk, they never felt what true 
pleasure meant." 

" And how came you, madam," quoth I, " to this 
deep knowledge of pleasure? And what did chiefly 
allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very 
few men, have attained thereunto ? " 

"I will tell you," quoth she, "and tell you a truth 
which, perchance, ye will marvel at. One of the 
greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that He 
sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle 
a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either 
of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, 
sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, 
playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, 



LADY JANE GREY. 135 



as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, 
even so perfectly as God made the world, or else I 
am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, 
presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and 
other ways, which I will not name for the honour I 
bear them, so without reason misordered, that I think 
myself in hell till time come that I must go to 
Mr. Aylmer; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, 
with such fair allurements to learning, that I think 
all the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when 
I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because, 
whatever I do else but learning, is full of grief, trouble, 
fear, and whole misliking unto me." 

Ascham does not appear to have seen her again 
after this memorable interview, but they occasionally 
corresponded ; and in his letters to his learned friends, 
he frequently commented on the sweetness of her 
character and the depth of her erudition. He spoke 
of Lady Mildred Cooke and the Lady Jane Grey as 
the two most learned women in England ; and summed 
up his praises of the latter in the remark that " however 
illustrious she was by her fortune and royal extraction, 
this bore no proportion to the accomplishments of 
her mind, adorned with the doctrine of Plato and 
the eloquence of Demosthenes." 

Her illustrious rank, her piety, and her erudition, 
necessarily made the Lady Jane an object of special 
interest to the leaders of the Reformed Church in 
England and on the Continent. The learned Martin 



ij6 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



Bruce, one of the Fathers of Protestantism, whom 
Edward VI. had appointed to the chair of Divinity at 
the University of Cambridge, watched over her with 
prayerful anxiety. Bullinger, a minister of Zurich, corre- 
sponded with her frequently, encouraging her in the 
practice of every Christian virtue. Under the direction 
and counsel of these and other divines, she pursued 
her theological studies with great success, so as to 
be able to defend and maintain the creed she had 
adopted, and give abundant reason for the faith that 
w r as in her. 

The Marquis of Dorset, in October 155 1, was raised 
to the dukedom of Suffolk; and on the same day the 
subtle and ambitious intriguer, John Dudley, Earl of 
Warwick, who was to exercise so malignant an influ- 
ence on his daughter's destiny, was created Duke of 
Northumberland. 

The Lady Jane was then removed to the metropolis, 
residing with her family at her father's " inn," or town- 
house, in Suffolk Place. She necessarily moved in the 
most brilliant social circles, and shared in the festivities 
of the court ; but she would seem to have been dis- 
tinguished always by a remarkable plainness of apparel ; 
in this obeying the impulse of her simplicity of taste, 
supported and confirmed by the advice of Bullinger and 
Aylmer. 

On one occasion the Princess Mary presented her 
with a sumptuous robe, which she was desired to wear 
in recognition of the donor's generosity. "Nay," she 



LADY JANE GREY. 137 



replied, " that were a shame, to follow my Lady Mary, 
who leaveth God's word, and leave my Lady Elizabeth 
who followeth God's word." A speech which the Lady 
Mary doubtlessly remembered. She paid a visit to her 
bigoted cousin at her mansion of New Hall in Essex in 
June 1552 ; and there, too, let fall a pungent utterance 
which kindled against her Mary's dull but patient hatred. 

She was walking, one afternoon, with the Lady Anne 
Wharton, who, as they passed a Roman Catholic chapel, 
made a low obeisance, in honour of the Host or con- 
secrated wafer, suspended, according to custom, over 
the holy altar. The Lady Jane, unable to perceive any 
one for whom the homage was intended, inquired if the 
Princess Mary were at her devotions in the chapel. 
" No," said her companion, " but I make obeisance to 
Him who made us all." " Why," answered Lady Jane, 
epigr ammatically, — " why, how can that which the baker 
made be He who made us all ? " 

I have elsewhere compared the life of Lady Jane Grey 
to a Shakespearian tragedy, which, opening with scenes 
of pomp and sunshine, is soon overspread with shadow, 
and closes at length in some lurid and terrible catastrophe. 
At first the stream ripples onward in the fair light ot 
day, with a pleasant song of peace ; then it begins to 
seethe and fret ; and the ominous voices borne upon the 
wind forewarn us that we are approaching a tempestuous 
sea and a wreck-strewn shore. 

Early in 1553, men clearly saw that the life and reign 

of Edward VI. were drawing, to an abrupt termination. 

10 



138 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

His legitimate successor was his elder sister Mary ; but 
her morose temper and bigoted attachment to the old 
Church had rilled the minds of the Reformers with a 
not unreasonable anxiety. Her unpopularity, and the 
dangers to the Reformed Church to be apprehended from 
her accession, led Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, to 
conceive an audacious design. He resolved to raise his 
son to the throne. But for this purpose it was neces- 
sary to ally him to the blood-royal, and he therefore 
planned a marriage between his young son, Lord Guil- 
ford Dudley, and Lady Jane Grey. There were such 
elements of fitness in the match that on neither side was 
any obstruction thrown ; and in June 1553 the bridal 
ceremony took place at the Duke of Northumberland's 
palace in the Strand. The Duke then obtained from 
King Edward, by an adroit appeal to his zeal for the 
Reformed Church, letters-patent, excluding Mary and 
Elizabeth from the succession on the ground of illegiti- 
macy, and declaring Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne. 
A few days afterwards the young king died ; and on the 
evening of the 9th of July, the Duke of Northumberland, 
accompanied by the Marquis of Northampton, the Earls 
of Arundel, Huntingdon, and Pembroke, appeared before 
the young bride in her quiet chamber at Northum- 
berland House, and urged her acceptance of a crown 
which was fated to become, for her, a crown of thorns. 
" How I was beside myself," she afterwards wrote, " how 
I was beside myself, stupefied and troubled, I will leave 
it to those lords who were present to testify, who saw me, 



LADY JANE GREY. 139 

overcome by sudden and unexpected grief, fall on the 
ground, weeping very bitterly; and then declaring to 
them my insufficiency, I greatly bewailed myself for the 
death of so noble a Prince, and at the same time turned 
myself to God, humbly praying and beseeching Him, 
that if what was given to me was rightly and lawfully 
mine, his Divine Majesty would grant me such grace and 
spirit that I might govern it to His glory and service, 
and to the advantage of this realm. With what boon," 
she continues, "does Fortune present me? A crown 
which hath been violently and shamefully wrested from 
Katharine of Aragon, made more unfortunate by the 
punishment of Anne Boleyn, and others that wore it 
after her." 

Her prudent reluctance, however, was overruled ; 
and history records the brief twelve days' pageant of her 
reign. On the 19th of July Mary entered London in 
triumph. "Great was the rejoicing," says a contem- 
porary ; so great that the like of it had never been seen 
by any living. The number of caps that were flung into 
the air at the proclamation could not be told. The 
Earl of Pembroke cast among the crowd a liberal largess. 
Bonfires blazed in every street ; and what with shouting 
and crying of the people, and ringing of bells, there 
could no one man hear what another said ; besides 
banqueting, and skipping the streets for joy ! 

Lady Jane was at first confined in the house of. one 
Partridge, a warder of the Tower. Thence, after she and 
her husband had been tried for high treason and found 



140 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

guilty, they were removed to the Tower. During her 
captivity she occasionally amused herself with the grace 
ful pursuits of her earlier and happier years, engraving on 
the walls of her prison, with a pin, some Latin distich. 
As, for example : — 

" Non aliena putes homini qua? obtirgere possunt : 
Sors hodierna mihi eras erat ilia tibi." 



Eglished : — 



" Believe not, man, in care's despite, 
That thou from others' ills art free 
The cross that now /suffer might 
To-morrow haply fall on thee." 



And again :- 



" Deo juvante nil avert livor malus, 
Et non juvante, nil juvat labor gravis 
Post tenebras spero lucem." 

Thus translated : — 

"Endless all malice, if our God is nigh : 
Fruitless all pains, if He His help deny, 
Patient I pass these gloomy hours away, 
And wait the morning of eternal day." 

Her execution was fixed for the 12th of February, 
1554. On the night preceding, she wrote a few sen- 
tences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New 
Testament. To her father she addressed the following 
exquisitely beautiful letter, in which filial reverence 
softens and subdues the exhortations of a dying saint. 
"The Lord comfort your Grace, and that in His Word, 



LADY JANE GREY. 141 

wherein all creatures only are to be comforted ; and 
though it hath pleased God to take away two of your 
children, yet think not, I most humbly beseech your 
Grace, that you have lost them; but trust that we, 
by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. 
And I, for my part, as I have honoured your Grace in 
this life, will pray for you in another life. — Your Grace's 
humble daughter, Jane Dudley." 

The stern Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, 
had been vanquished by the tender, gentle graces of his 
prisoner, and he sought from her some memorial in 
writing. In a manual of manuscript prayers she wrote a 
few sentences of farewell :* — 

" Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman 
to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, 
therefore I shall, as a friend, desire you, and as a Chris- 
tian require you, to call upon God to incline your heart 
to His laws, to quicken you in His way, and not to take 
the word of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still 
to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life, and 
remember how Methuselah, who, as we read in the 
Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died 
at the last ; for, as the Preacher saith, there is a time to 
be born and a time to die ; and the day of death is 
better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord 
knoweth, as a friend, Jane Dudley." 

Mary and her advisers had originally intended that 

* " Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary," p. 57. 



1 42 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

both Lady Jane and her husband should be executed 
together on Tower Hill ; but reflection convinced them 
that the spectacle of so comely and youthful a pair, 
suffering for what was rather the crime of others than 
their own, might powerfully awaken the sympathies of 
the multitude, and produce an unwelcome revulsion of 
feeling. It was ordered, therefore, that Lady Jane 
should suffer within the precincts of the Tower. The 
fatal morning came. The young husband— still a bride- 
groom and a lover — had obtained permission to bid her 
a last farewell ; but she refused to see him, apprehensive 
that so bitter a parting might overwhelm them, and 
deprive them of the courage needful to face with calm- 
ness the agony of death. She sent him, however, many 
loving messages, reminding him how brief would be their 
separation, and how quickly they would meet in a 
brighter and better world. In going to his death on 
Tower Hill, he passed beneath the window of her cell ; 
so that they had an opportunity of exchanging a farewell 
look. He behaved on the scaffold with calm intrepidity. 
After spending a brief space in silent devotion, he re- 
quested the prayers of the spectators, and, laying his head 
upon the block, gave the fatal signal. At one blow his 
head was severed from his body. 

The scaffold on which the girl-queen was to close her 
stainless career had been erected on the green opposite 
the White Tower. As soon as her husband was dead, 
the officers announced that the sheriffs waited to attend 
her thither. And when she had gone down and been 



LADY JANE GREY. 143 

delivered into their hands, the bystanders noted in her 
"a countenance so gravely settled with all modest and 
comely resolution, that not the least symptom either of 
fear or grief could be perceived either in her speech or 
motions ; she was like one going to be united to hei 
heart's best and longest beloved." 

So like a martyr, crowned with glory, she went unto 
her death. Her serene composure was scarcely shaken, 
when, through an unfortunate misunderstanding of the 
officer in command, she met on her way her husband's 
headless trunk being borne to its last resting-place. " O 
Guilford ! Guilford ! " she exclaimed ; " the ante-past is 
not so bitter that you have tasted, and that I shall soon 
taste, as to make my flesh tremble ; it is nothing com- 
pared to the feast that you and I shall this day partake 
of in heaven." This thought renewed her strength, and 
sustained and consoled, we might almost believe, by 
ministering angels, she proceeded to the scaffold with as 
much grace and dignity as if it were a wedding-banquet 
that awaited her. 

She was conducted by Sir John Brydges, the Lieu- 
tenant of the Tower, and attended by her two waiting- 
women, Mrs. Elizabeth Tylney and Mrs. Ellen. While 
these wept and sobbed bitterly, her eyes were dry, and 
her countenance shone with the light of a sure and 
certain hope. She read earnestly her manual of prayers. 
On reaching the place of execution she saluted the lords 
and gentlemen present with unshaken composure and 
infinite grace. No minister of the Reformed Church 



144 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



had been allowed to attend her, and she did not care to 
accept the services of Feckenham, Queen Mary's con- 
fessor. She was not indifferent, however, to his respect- 
ful sympathy and when bidding him farewell, she said : 
" Go now ; God grant you all your desires, and accept 
my own warm thanks for your attentions to me ; 
although, indeed, those attentions have tried me more 
than death could now terrify me." 

To the spectators she addressed a few gentle words, in 
admirable keeping with the gentle tenor of her life : — 
"Good people," she exclaimed, "I am come hither to 
die, and by law I am condemned to the same. My 
offence to the Queen's Highness was only in consent 
to the device of others, which now is deemed treason ; 
but it was never my seeking, but by counsel of those 
who should seem to have further understanding of things 
than I, who knew little of the law, and much less of the 
titles to the Crown. I pray you all, good Christian 
people, to bear me witness that I die a true Christian 
woman, and that I look to be saved by none other means 
but only by the mercy of God, in the merits of the blood 
of His only Son, Jesus Christ; and I confess, when I 
did know the Word of God, I neglected the same, loved 
myself and the world, and therefore this plague or 
punishment is happily and worthily happened unto me 
for my sins ; and yet I thank God of His goodness, that 
He hath thus given me a time and respite to repent. And 
now, good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist 
me with your prayers." 




LADY JANE GREY. 



LADY JANE GREY. 145 

She knelt down to perform her devotions, and turning 
to Feckenham, inquired whether she should repeat the 
Miserere psalm (the 51st, " Have mercy upon me, O 
Lord "). He replied in the affirmative ; and she said it 
with great earnestness from beginning to end. Rising 
from her knees, she began to prepare herself for the 
headsman, and, pulling off her gloves, gave them and 
her handkerchief to Mistress Tylney. The manual of 
prayers, in which she had written at the desire of the 
Lieutenant, she handed to Thomas Brydges, his brother. 
When she was unfastening her robe, the executioner 
would have assisted her, but she motioned him aside, 
and accepted the last offices of her waiting-women, who 
then gave her a white handkerchief with which to bandage 
her eyes. 

Throwing himself at her feet, the headsman humbly 
craved her forgiveness, which she willingly granted. He 
then requested her to stand upon the straw, and in com- 
plying with his direction she for the first time saw the 
fatal block. Her composure remained unshaken ; she 
simply entreated the executioner to despatch her quickly. 
Again kneeling, she asked him, "Will you take it oft 
before I lay me down?" "No, madam," he replied. 
She bound the handkerchief round her eyes, and feeling 
for the block, exclaimed, " What shall I do ? Where is 
it ? " Being guided to it by one of the bystanders, she 
laid her head down, exclaiming, in an audible voice, 
" Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." 

In an instant the axe fell, and the tragedy was con- 



146 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

summated. An involuntary groan from the assembled 
multitude seemed to acknowledge that vengeance had 
been satisfied, but justice outraged. 

Lady Jane — or Queen Jane, as she should more pro- 
perly be called — was little more than seventeen years old 
when she thus fell a victim to Mary's jealous fears and 
religious hate. She had hardly entered upon woman- 
hood, and the promise of her young life had had no time 
to ripen into fruition. We may well believe, however, 
that she would not have disappointed the hopes which 
that promise had awakened. Her heroic death showed 
how well she had profited by the lessons she had im- 
bibed in her early years. There was no affectation, no 
exaggeration, in her conduct upon the scaffold ; but she 
bore herself with serene dignity and with true Christian 
courage. It was worthy of her life — which, brief as an 
unhappy fortune made it, was full of beauty, full of calm- 
ness, and truth, and elevation, and modest piety. The 
impression which it made upon her contemporaries, an 
impression taken up and retained by posterity, is visible 
in the fact that to this hour we speak of her as she was 
in her sweet simple maidenhood, — we pass over her 
married name and her regal title, and love to honour her, 
not as Lady Jane Dudley, or Queen Jane, but as Lady 
Jane Grey. 



Note. — A finer illustration of her high qualities, and of the 
mingled tenderness and gravity of her character, cannot be found than 
in the letter which, three days before her execution, she wrote to her 



LADY JANE GREY. j 47 



father the Duke of Suffolk. I transfer it, therefore, to these 
pages. * 

"Father, — Although it hath pleased God to hasten my death 
by you, by whom my life should rather have been lengthened, yet 
can I so patiently take it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for 
shortening my woful days than if all the world had been given into 
my possession, with life lengthened at my own will. And, albeit 
I am well assured of your impatient dolours, redoubled many ways 
both in bewailing your own woe, and especially, as I am informed, 
my woful estate ; yet, my dear father (if I may, without offence, 
rejoice in my own mishaps), conscious in this I may account myself 
blessed, that washing my hands with the innocency of my fact, my 
guiltless blood may cry before the Lord, Mercy to the innocent ! 
And th- -ugh I must needs acknowledge that, being constrained, and, 
as you know well enough, continually assayed, in taking [the royal 
authority] upon me, I seemed to consent, and therein grievously 
offended the Queen and her laws ; yet do I assuredly trust, that this 
my offence towards God is so much the less, in that, being in so 
royal state as I was, my enforced honour never blended with mine 
innocent heart. And thus, good father, I have opened unto you the 
state wherein I presently stand. My death at hand, although to you, 
perhaps, it may seem right woful, yet to me there is nothing that can 
be more welcoming than from this vale of misery to aspire to that 
heavenly of all joy and pleasure, with Christ our Saviour, in whose 
steadfast faith (if it may be lawful for the daughter so to write to 
the father) may the Lord, that hath hitherto strengthened you, so 
continue to keep you, that at the last we may meet in heaven with 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. — I am, your obedient 
daughter unto death, Jane Dudley." 

To her sister she wrote, on the eve of her execution, at the end 
of a Greek New Testament, which she sent to her as a farewell 
token : — 

" I have here sent you, my dear sister Katherine, a book which, 
although it be not outwardly trimmed in gold, or the curious em- 



* Sir Harris Nicolas, " Literary Remains of Lady Jane Grey, 
edit. 1832. 



CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



broidery of the artfullest needles, yet inwardly is more worth than 
all the precious mines which the vast woi-ld can boast of. It is the 
book, my only best and best beloved sister, of the law of the Lord ; 
it is the testament and last will which He bequeathed unto us 
wretches and wretched sinners, which shall lead you to the path of 
eternal joy. And if you with a good mind read it, and with an 
earnest desire follow it, no doubt it shall bring you to an immortal 
and everlasting life. It will teach you to live and learn you to die ; 
it shall win you more, and endow you with greater felicity, than you 
should have gained by the possession of your woful father's lands, 
for as, if God had prospered him, you should have inherited his 
lion ours and manors, so, if you apply diligently to this book, seeking 
to direct your life according to the rule of the same, you shall be 
an inheritor of such riches as neither the covetous shall withdraw 
from you, neither the thief shall steal, neither yet the moths corrupt. 
Desire, with David, my best sister, to understand the law of the 
Lord your God ; live still to die, that you by death may purchase 
eternal life, and trust not that the tenderness of your age shall 
lengthen your life ; for unto God, when He calleth, all hours, times, 
and seasons are alike, and blessed are they whose lamps are furnished 
when He cometh, for as soon will the Lord be glorified in the young 
as in the old. 

' ' My good sister, once more again let me entreat you to learn to 
die ; deny the world, defy the devil, and despise the flesh, and 
delight yourself only in the Lord : be penitent for your sins, and yet 
despair not ; be strong in faith, yet presume not ; and desire, with 
Saint Paul, to be dissolved and to be with Christ, with whom even 
in death there is life. 

" Be like the good servant, and even at midnight be waking, lest 
when death cometh and stealeth upon you like a thief in the ni^ht, 
you be, with the servants of darkness, found sleeping ; and lest, for 
lack of oil, you be found like the five foolish virgins, or like him 
that had not on the wedding-garment, and then you be cast into 
darkness or banished from the marriage. Rejoice in Christ, as I 
trust you do ; and, seeing you have the name of a Christian, as near 
as you can, follow the steps, and be a true imitator of your Master, 
Christ Jesus, and take up your cross, lay your sins on His back, and 
always embrace Him. 



LADY JANE GREY. 149 

" Now, as touching my death, rejoice, as I do, my dearest sister, 
that I shall be delivered of this corruption, and put on incorruption : 
for I am assured that I shall, for losing a mortal life, win one that 
is immortal, everlasting, and joyful ; the which I pray God grant 
in His most blessed hour, and send you His all-saving grace to 
live in His fear, and to die in true Christian faith, from which, in 
God's name, I exhort you never swerve, neither for hope of life nor 
fear of death ; for if you will deny His truth, to give length to a weary 
and corrupt breath, God Himself will deny you, and by vengeance 
make short what you, by your soul's loss, would prolong ; but if you 
will cleave to Him He will stretch forth your days to an uncircum- 
scribed comfort, and to His own glory, to the which glory God 
bring me now, and you hereafter, when it shall please Him to call 
you. Farewell, once again, my beloved sister, and put your only 
trust in God, who only must help you. Amen. — Your loving sister, 
Jane Dudley." 

The interest of this note will, I hope, excuse its length. It 
may fitly conclude with Mr. Froude's estimate of our heroine's 
character and accomplishments : — "Jane Grey's accomplishments," 
he says, "were as extensive as Edward VI.'s; she had acquired a 
degree of learning rare in matured men, which she could use grace- 
fully, and could permit to be seen by others without vanity or con- 
sciousness. Her character had developed with her talents. At 
fifteen she was learning Hebrew and could write Greek ; at sixteen 
she corresponded with Bullinger in Latin at least equal to his own ; 
but the matter of her letters is more striking than the language, and 
speaks more for her than the most elaborate panegyrics of admiring 
courtiers. She has left a portrait of herself drawn by her own hand,* 
— a portrait of piety, purity, and free noble innocence, uncoloured, 
even to a fault, with the emotional weaknesses of humanity. While 
the effects of the Reformation in England had been chiefly visible 
in the outward dominion of scoundrels, and in the eclipse of the 
hereditary virtues of the national character, Lady Jane Grey had 
lived to show that the defect was not in the Reformed faith, but in 

* See her letters to Bullinger, in the Epistola Tigurinez, pp. 
3—7- 



150 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the absence of all faith, — that the graces of a St. Elizabeth could be 
rivalled by the pupil of Cranmer and Ridley. The Catholic saint 
had no excellence of which Jane Grey was without the promise ; the 
distinction was in the freedom of the Protestant from the hysterical 
ambition for an unearthly nature, and in the presence, through a 
more intelligent creed, of a vigorous and practical understanding. " — 
Froude, History of 'England, v. 181, 182. 

Lucy Hutchinson. 

Ask an educated Englishman to name the woman 
whom, before all others, he would put forward as the 
type of conjugal devotion, and I think the chances are 
that he will answer, Lucy Hutchinson. The records of 
woman scarcely present to us a fairer or brighter charac- 
ter than this most true wife, who to the Puritan soldier 
and statesman proved so noble and so devoted a help- 
mate. She has unconsciously drawn her own portrait in 
those Memoirs of her husband which have secured him 
so lasting a renown, — and a charming portrait it is. 
Grave without being gloomy, dignified without hauteur, 
serene of temper, cultivated in mind, gracious and 
graceful in manner, a thoughtful adviser, a tenderly wise 
mother, a loving wife, she stands before us a very notable 
and attractive personage. But this womanhood which 
we all admire in its beautiful perfection was but the 
natural outcome of a not less distinguished girlhood. 

A charmingly natural account of this happy girlhood 
is given by herself in a few pages which she prefixes to 
the life of Colonel Hutchinson. She tells us that she 
was born on the 27th of February, 1620, in the Tower 



MRS. HUTCHINSON. 151 

of London, of which her father, Sir Allen Apsley, was 
Lieutenant. Her mother, his third wife, was the daughter 
of Sir John St John, of Lidiard Tregoy, Wiltshire. Sir 
Allen was a man, she says, of great natural parts, but was 
too active in his youth to cultivate them " by study of 
dead writings " ; but in the living books of men's con- 
versations he acquired so much skill that he was never 
mistaken but when he allowed himself to be deceived by 
his goodness of heart. He was a most indulgent husband 
and father, a noble master, and a father to his prisoners, 
— " sweetening with such compassionate kindness their 
restraint, that the affliction of a prison was not felt in his 
days. All his virtues were fitly crowned by piety and 
true devotion to God. Never did any two better agree 
in magnanimity and bounty than he and my mother, 
who seemed to be actuated by the same soul, so little 
did she grudge any of his liberalities to strangers, or he 
contradict any of her kindness to all her relations : her 
house being a common home to all of them, and a 
nursery to their children. . . Sir Walter Raleigh and 
Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting 
themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make 
their rare experiments at her cost; partly to comfort 
and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the 
knowledge of their art, and the medicines to help such 
poor people as were not able to seek for physicians. 
By these means she acquired a great degree of skill, 
which was very profitable to many all her life." 

Lucy Apsley inherited the natural parts and bounteous 

11 



152 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

disposition of her parents, who, recognizing the fine 
promise of her spring, bestowed a wise care upon her 
education. She read English perfectly by the time she 
was four years old. She was taken regularly to church, 
and having a strong memory, easily retained and re- 
peated the sermons she heard there — a feat of childish 
cleverness which won her much applause. There is clear 
evidence that her parents stimulated to the utmost the 
quick intellect of their clever child. " When I was 
about seven years of age," she says, " I remember I had, 
at one time, eight tutors in several qualities, — languages, 
music, dancing, writing, and needlework." She candidly 
owns, however, that her genius was quite averse from all 
but her books, and to these she devoted herself with an 
application which, thinking it would prove prejudicial 
to her health, her mother endeavoured to moderate. 
Every moment she could steal from her play she would 
employ in any book she could find, when her own had 
been locked up from her. The hour for play allowed 
her after dinner and supper she spent in quiet reading 
in some out-of-the-way room. At her father's desire she 
learned Latin, and made such rapid progress that she 
soon outstripped her brothers, who were at school, 
though her father's chaplain, who officiated as her tutor, 
was a " pitiful dull fellow." For music and dancing she 
seems to have had little liking ; and she would never 
practise her lute or harpsichord except when under 
the compulsion of her master's presence. 

" As for my needle," she continues, " I absolutely 



MRS. HUTCHINSON. 153 

hated it ; play among other children I despised ; and 
when I was forced to entertain such as came to visit me, 
I tired them with more grave instructions than their 
mothers, and plucked all their babies to pieces — [what 
a delightful picture is this of the grave and demure little 
pedant !]— and kept the children in such awe, that they 
were glad when I entertained myself with elder company, 
to whom I was very acceptable ; and living in the house 
with many persons that had a great deal of wit, and very 
profitable serious discourses being frequent at my father's 
table, and in my mother's drawing-room, I was very 
attentive to all, and gathered up things that I would 
utter again, to the great admiration of many that took 
my memory and imitation for wit." 

Lucy Apsley, however, with all her love of study and 
contempt for childhood's play, was not without a be- 
coming touch of feminine softness. She owns to having 
had no disinclination to "learning and hearing witty 
songs, and amorous sonnets and poems ; " and she 
had a tenderness of nature which made her the willing 
confidant of the love-passages of her mother's young 
women, "and there were some of them that had many 
lovers, and some particular friends beloved above the 
rest." 

Growing up into a maiden of much comeliness of 
person and grace of manner, with intellectual powers, 
naturally above the average, carefully developed and 
cultivated, and a character of considerable force and 
individuality, Lucy Apsley became, as it were, the 



54 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



cynosure of an extensive circle, and was talked about 
as young ladies who rise above the conventional level 
always are. Some report of her attractions reached the 
ears of a young gentleman, a Mr. John Hutchinson, 
the son of Sir Thomas Hutchinson and Lady Margaret 
Brion, who was also marked by a certain measure of 
originality and independence. He was on a visit to 
Richmond, when, at the house where he was staying, a 
song was sung which elicited general admiration. A 
gentleman present observed that it was written by a lady 
of the neighbourhood. Whereupon Mr. Hutchinson, 
" fancying," says his wife, with a light satirical touch, 
" something of rationality in the sonnet beyond the 
customary reach of a she-wit, said he could scarcely 
believe it was a woman's." But it was ; and the com- 
position of the Miss Lucy Apsley whose praises he 
had already heard. " I cannot rest," exclaimed 
Mr. Hutchinson, " until this lady returns. I must 
be acquainted with her." On this point his hopes 
were quickly dashed by the information that she did 
not care to be acquainted with gentlemen. This 
"inexpressive she" was exceedingly unwilling that her 
perfections should be known. " She lived only in 
the enjoyment of herself, and had not the humanity to 
communicate that happiness to any of the other sex." 

However, after the lapse of a few weeks, Mr. Hutchin- 
son had the good fortune to obtain an introduction to 
this paragon of maidens, and was soon convinced that 
Rumour, in speaking highly of her gifts and graces, 



MRS. HUTCHINSON. 155 



natural and acquired, had been no liar. It was, in truth, 
a case of love at first sight, — and not only on the gentle- 
man's part, but on that of the young lady, then, I think, 
in her seventeenth year. She was surprised, she simply 
tells us, with " an unusual liking in her soul for a gentle- 
man whose countenance and graceful mien promised an 
extraordinary person." The course of true love, so far 
as this happy pair was concerned, ran smooth. The 
more they saw of each other, the more they appreciated 
each the other's admirable qualities. The description 
of their first meeting, however, must not be passed 
over : — 

" His heart, being prepossessed with his own fancy, 
was not free to discern how little there was in her to 
answer so great an expectation. She was not ugly, in 
a careless riding habit : she had a melancholy negligence 
both of herself and others, as if she neither affected to 
please others, nor took notice of anything before her ; 
yet, spite of all her indifferency, she was surprised with 
some unusual liking in her soul when she saw this gentle- 
man, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance, 
enough to beget love in any one at the first, and these 
set off with a graceful and generous mien, which pro- 
mised an extraordinary person. He was at that time 
and indeed always was, very neatly habited ; for he wore 
good and rich clothes, and had variety of them, and had 
them well suited and every way answerable, in that little 
thing showing both good judgment and great generosity, 
he equally becoming them and they him, which he wore 



156 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

with such unaffectedness and meekness as do not often 
meet in one." 

That love which is based upon principle and reason, 
and upon a full knowledge of the person loved, may not 
be the most romantic and sentimental, but it is certainly 
the most lasting. To the depth, purity, and steadiness 
of the attachment which Lucy Apsley conceived for John 
Hutchinson, her whole life bears evidence, not less than 
her pathetic record of her husband's career. To the 
strength and wisdom of his affection for her, she never 
fails to testify : "there never was," she says, " a passion 
more ardent and less idolatrous." She adds : " He loved 
her better than his life, with inexpressible tenderness and 
kindness, had a most high obliging esteem of her, yet 
still considered honour, religion, and duty above her; 
nor ever suffered the intrusion of such a dotage as should 
blind him from marking her imperfections : those he 
looked upon with such an indulgent e>e as did not 
abate his love and esteem for her, while it augmented 
his care to blot out all those spots which might make 
her appear less worthy of that respect he paid her ; and 
thus, indeed, he soon made her more equal to him than 
he found her ; for she was a very faithful mirror, reflect- 
ing truly, though but dimly, his own glories upon him, 
so long as he was present ; but she, that was nothing 
before his inspection gave her a fair figure, when he was 
removed was only filled with a dark mist, and never 
could again take in any delightful object, nor return any 
shining representation." 



MRS. HUTCHINSON. 



157 



With all a loving woman's self-abnegation she exclaims, 
— "The greatest excellence she had was the power of 
apprehending and the virtue of loving his ; so, as his 
shadow, she waited on him everywhere, till he was taken 
into that region of light which admits of none, and then 
she vanished into nothing." 

The reader will not fail to remark the exquisite beauty 
of this last sentence ; it reflects the exquisite beauty of a 
refined mind and a tender heart. 

The marriage of this well-assorted pair, who in birth, 
station, person, character, and even age, were so nearly 
on an equality, was soon decided upon ; but the very day 
that the friends of both parties met to settle the necessary 
conditions, Lucy Apsley was seized with small-pox. The 
attack was so severe as to endanger her life ; and after 
her recovery her countenance long retained the ghastly 
traces of its terrible work. Mr. Hutchinson, however, 
had been attracted rather by the jewel than by the 
casket, by the mind rather than the person ; and as 
soon as she was able to quit her chamber, he insisted 
upon fulfilling his engagement. God granted him a 
noble reward for his constancy, for after a while she fully 
recovered her natural comeliness. 

They were married in 1638, when Mr. Hutchinson 
was twenty-three and his bride eighteen years of age. 
They lived together in great happiness for many years, 
until, after the restoration of Charles II., he was arrested 
on a charge of high treason, and imprisoned in Sandan 
Castle, in Kent. There his wife waited upon him with 



158 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

loving assiduousness, while exercising all her energies, 
though in vain, to secure his release. The close con- 
finement, the want of active exercise, and the dampness 
of his prison, brought upon him a mortal illness, of which, 
in the autumn of 1664, he died, with his dying breath 
testifying to his wife's excellences and to his deep affection 
for her. 



159 



CHAPTER III. 

SOME NOTABLE ENGLISHWOMEN. 

MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. — MARGARET 

MORE. MARY GRANVILLE. LADY MARY WORTLEY 

MONTAGU. 

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. 

MOST of my readers, I am sure, will be acquainted 
with Ben Jonson's exquisite epitaph on Mary 
Sidney, Countess of Pembroke : — 

" Underneath this marble hearse 
Lies the subject of all verse — 
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; 
Death, ere thou hast slain another, 
Learned and fair and good as she, 
Time shall throw a dart at thee." 

But it is possible they may not all be aware how well 
she deserved this delicate and refined eulogium. As 
daughter, sister, wife, and mother, as a patron of learning 
and a friend of the learned, as the prudent mistress of a 
splendid household and the dispenser of a dignified 
hospitality, as the centre of a glittering social circle and 
the ornament of a magnificent court, Mary, Countess of 



i6o CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



Pembroke, occupied a foremost place among English- 
women of the sixteenth century. It must be admitted 
that she was singularly favoured by fortune : she was the 
daughter of one of Elizabeth's most trusted statesmen, 
Sir Henry Sidney; she was the sister of the author of 
"The Arcadia" and the hero of Zutphen ; she became 
the wife of a peer of high character and brilliant position; 
and the mother of two sons, who, though in the war 
between Charles I. and the Parliament they took 
opposite sides, displayed an equality of valour and a 
community of chivalrous sentiment. She was fortunate, 
too, in not living to see them arrayed on opposite 
sides, — dying some twenty years before the king raised 
his ill-fated standard at Newbury. 

Mary Sidney was born at Penshurst Place in 1555 ; 
and in that fine sylvan demesne which Spenser's memory 
and Ben Jonson's verse have immortalised, spent the 
happy years of her girlhood. Her parents superintended 
her education with loving care, and watched over the 
due development of her rare mental i^ifts. She acquired 
an accurate knowledge of several languages, and learned 
to write her own with taste and exactness. Her acquire- 
ments were so considerable as to draw attention to her 
even in a time rich in accomplished women ; and 
Osborn, the historian of James L, speaks of her as that 
sister of Sir Philip Sidney " to whom he addressed his 
' Arcadia,' and of whom he had no other advantage than 
what he received from the partial benevolence of fortune 
in making him a man (which yet she did, in some judg- 



MARY SIDNEY. 



ments, recompense in beauty), her pen being nothing 
short of his, as I am ready to attest, having seen some 
incomparable letters of hers." Similarly, Spenser places 
her on an equality with her illustrious brother, referring 
to her as 

" Clorinda bright, 
The gentlest shepherdess that lives this day, 
And most resembling both in shape and sprue 
Her brother dear." 

We know, from the stately rhymes of Ben Jonson, that 
both sister and brother grew up in an atmosphere well 
adapted to educe their finer qualities : — 

" They are, and have been taught religion ; thence 
Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence. 
Each morn, and even, they are taught to pray 
With the whole household, and may, every day, 
Read in their virtuous parents' noble parts 
The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts." 

A strong and deep affection subsisted between Mary 
and Philip Sidney, based upon their similarity of disposi- 
tion, and confirmed by their pursuit of the same studies. 
Poetry to each was an exceeding great good, and among 
the romantic shades of Penshurst they assiduously culti- 
vated the muse. It is to Mary Sidney's poetic sympathy 
we owe the fine poem of " The Arcadia, " which was only 
preserved to the world through her tender vigilance. 
The inventive faculty of genius had been denied to her ; 
she could not ascend the loftier heights of song ; but. 
encouraged by the example of her brother, and probabl) 
stimulated by the counsel of her brother's friend, the 



1 62 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

poet of " The Fairy Queen," she occasionally indulged 
herself in the graceful practice of poetic composition. 
Either at Penshurst, or else, after her marriage, at 
Wilton, she wrote the charming version of the Psalter, 
known as the Sidnean Psalms, the sweetness and tender 
grace of which have drawn from Hartley Coleridge the 
remark that "it was a pity they were not authorised to be 
sung in churches, for the present versions are a disgrace 
and a mischief to the Establishment." And quaint old 
Daniel, the Elizabethan poet, eulogizes 

" Those hymns which thou didst consecrate to Heaven, 
Which Israel's singer to his God did frame ; " 

which, he adds, 

' ' Unto thy voyage eternity have given, 

And made thee dear to him from whence they came.** 

Mary Sidney was also the authoress of a " Pastoral 
Dialogue in Praise of Astraea " (that is, of Queen Eliza- 
beth), which abounds in the flowery concetti of the age. 
The following stanzas bear witness to her ease of versifi- 
cation : — 

" Thenot. Astrsea may he justly said, 

A field in flowery robe arrayed, 
In seasons freshly springing. 

Piers. That Spring endures but shortest time, 
This never leaves Astraea's clime ; 
Thou liest, instead of singing. 

Thenot. Then, Piers, of friendship tell me why, 
Thy meaning true, my words should lie, 
And strive in vain to raise her ? 



MARY SIDNEY. 163 



Piers. Words from conceit do onely rise, 
Above conceit her honour flies, 

But silence nought can praise her." 

Reference may also be made to her elegy on the death 
of her illustrious brother. The sweetness of its verse 
was commended by Spenser, and it contains unquestion- 
ably some passages of refined beauty. It is entitled 
" The Doleful Lay of Clorinda," and I transcribe a few 
of the more pathetic stanzas : — 

" The fairest flower in field that ever grew 
Was Astrophel : that was, we all may rue. 

" O Death ! that hast us of such riches reft, 

Tell us at least what hast thou with it done ? 
What is become of him whose flower here left 

Is but the shadow of his likeness gone ? 
Scarce like the shadow of that which he was, 
Nought like, but that he like a shade did pass. 

u But that immortal spirit, which was deckt 
With all the flowers of celestial grace, 

By sovran choice from th' heavenly quires select. 
And lineally derived from angels' race, 

Oh, what is now of it become aread, 

Ay me, can so divine a thing be dead ? 

'• Ah, no ; it is not dead, nor can it die, 
But lives for aye in blissful Paradise : 
Where like a new-born babe it soft doth lie, 

In bed of lilies wrapt in tender wise ; 
And compassed all about with roses sweet, 
And dainty violets from head to feet. 

" Three thousand birds, all of celestial brood, 
To him do sweetly carol day and night ; 
And with strange notes, of him well understood, 
Lull him asleep in angelic delight ; 



1 64 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Whilst in sweet dream to him presented be 
Immortal beauties, which no eye may see. 

" But he them sees, and takes exceeding pleasure 
Of their divine aspects, appearing plain, 
And kindling love in him above all measure, 
Sweet love still joyous, never feeling pain. 
For what so goodly form he there doth see, 
He may enjoy from jealous rancour free. 

" There liveth he in everlasting bliss, 

Sweet spirit, never fearing more to die, 
No dreading harm from any foes of his, 

No fearing savage beasts more cruelty. 
Whilst we here, wretches, wail his private lack,* 
And with vain vows do often call him back. 

" But live thou there, still happy, happy spirit, 
And give us leave thee here thus to lament I 
Not thee that dost thy heaven's joy inherit, 

But our own selves that here in dole are drent.f 
Thus do we weep and wail and wear our eyes, 
Mourning, in others, our own miseries ! " 

I can conceive the objection being raised that the 
grief for a brother's loss which finds expression in a 
"doleful lay" cannot be very sincere nor very per- 
manent; but such an objection will be made in 
ignorance of the character of the age in which the Sidneys 
flourished. A " virgin queen," was on the throne, and 
surrounded by an atmosphere of poetry which inter- 
penetrated every social relation. Queen and courtiers, 
warriors and statesmen, nobles, squires, and yeomen, all 
played their parts in a kind of brilliant masquerade, as 

* That is, lament his individual loss, 
f In grief are overwhelmed or drowned. 



MARY SIDNEY. 165 



if England were the Arcady of the old legends, and the 
days of the nymphs and fauns had come again. Passion 
was real, and real was thought and feeling, but they 
sought expression in a revivification of the old forms. 
The English gentleman and the English maiden made 
love under the sweet guise of Strephon and Thyrsis ; and 
when Strephon and Thyrsis married, poets chanted their 
epithalamion, or marriage-hymn, as they might have 
done in the days of Moschus and Bion. When they 
died, flowers were cast upon their graves, — monodies and 
elegies, and rhymed laments, which seem to a more 
prosaic age the excess of artifice, but were, in truth, 
simply the artificial expression of a genuine sorrow. 
This stage -play, acted on so wide and conspicuous a 
stage, and having for its performers the leading spirits of 
the nation, was necessarily fated to exercise a powerful 
influence. It kindled in the popular heart a wonderful 
enthusiasm ; it cherished the artistic tendency ; it 
infused a certain degree of chivalrous refinement into 
the manners and tastes of an age which retained much of 
the coarseness and waywardness of the past. It fostered 
the genius of men like Shakespeare, and Spenser, and 
Ben Jonson. It inspired the heroic to deeds of daring, 
like those of Grenville and Drake and Hawkins, or of 
self-denial and generosity, like that famous action of Sir 
Philip Sidney on the field of Zutphen. The reader, 
therefore, must not conclude that Mary Sidney's grief 
was unreal, because it found utterance in the " Doleful 
Lay of Clorinda." 



1 66 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Happily passed the young lives of the brother and 
sister in the shadow of the stately halls of Penshurst ; 
and the tender, refined girlhood of the one, and the 
chivalrous poetic youth of the latter, were fit preludes to 
their bright and beautiful careers — to the pure womanhood 
of Mary Sidney, and the splendid manhood of the hero 
of Zutphen. Sweet communion was theirs over the 
immortal pages of poet, moralist, and theologian ; many 
were the swallow-flights of song they assayed together ; 
and rare was the inspiration which they imbibed from 
the fair Kentish landscapes around their ancient home. 
Of these pleasant scenes Sir Philip Sidney has left us a 
description in his " Arcadia." 

" There were hills," he writes, " which garnished their 
proud heights with stately trees ; humble valleys whose 
base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver 
rivers ; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing 
flowers ; thickets which, being lined with most pleasant 
shade, were witnessed so too by the cheerful disposition 
of many well-tuned birds ; each pasture stored with 
sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty 
lambs with bleating oratory craved the dam's comfort ; 
here a shepherd's boy piping as though he should never 
be old, there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal 
singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her 
hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice- 
music. As for the houses of the country (for many 
houses came under their eye), they were all scattered, no 
two being one by the other, and yet not so far off as 



MARGARET MORE 167 



that it barred mutual succour ; a show, as it were, of an 
accompanionable solitariness and of a civil wilderness." 

Among such scenes was Mary Sidney nurtured ; and 
their influence coloured all her later life, cherishing that 
love of the beautiful which she preserved to her last hour, 
and developing a simplicity and purity of taste somewhat 
rare in the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts. 

Margaret More. 

Nicholas Udall, writing in the reign of Henry VIII., 
says : "What a number is there of noble women, 
especially here in this realm of England, yea, and how 
many in the years of tender virginity, not only as well 
seen and as familiarly learned in the Latin and Greek 
tongues as in their own mother language, but also both 
in all kinds of profane literature and liberal arts, exacted, 
studied, and exercised ; and in the Holy Scriptures and 
theology so ripe, that they are able, aptly, amusingly, and 
with much grace, either to indite or translate into the 
vulgar tongue, for the public instruction and edifying of 
the unlearned multitude ! Neither is it now a strange 
thing to hear gentlewomen, instead of most vain com- 
munications about the moon shining in the water, to use 
grave and substantial talk in Latin or Greek with their 
husbands of godly matters." 

Such an one was Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas 
More, whom Erasmus styles " Britanniae Decus." She ac- 
quired a knowledge of rhetoric, logic, music, astronomy 

physic, philosophy, and arithmetic, and made herself 

12 



1 68 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

mistress of the Greek and Latin tongues. Her sister 
Elizabeth was not less admirable as a scholar. Erasmus 
draws a pleasant picture of their studious girlhood. 
Their wise father had taken care, he says, that all his 
children should be trained from their tender years, first 
religiously, next in polite literature, — cultivating primarily 
their spiritual, and secondarily their intellectual faculties. 
" In his house you will see no one idle, no one occupied 
about the trifles to which some females are devoted. 
They are now reading the works of Livy," he records, 
" and have made so much progress that they can read 
authors of this description without explanation, unless 
they chance to meet with a word which would give me, 
or persons like me, e ome difficulty. His wife, who has 
more natural ability and experience than learning, with 
wonderful tact manages the whole party, prescribing to 
each of them her task, and requiring her to show how 
she has performed it, not suffering any one to be idle 
or occupied with trifles. . . You would say he had in 
his house Plato's Academy ; but that were to do it an 
injury, for in Plato's Academy were only disputations 
concerning numbers and geometrical figures, and some- 
times concerning virtue and morality. You might more 
properly call it the school and gymnasium of the Chris 
tian religion. Though all the members of the family 
make piety the principal object of their converse; yet 
they find time for liberal studies and profitable reading. 
In that house the voice of contention is never heard, 
no one is ever seen idle. Every one does his (or her) 



MARGARET MORE. 169 

duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerful- 
ness. That distinguished man secures the good order 
of his household not by harsh and overbearing treatment, 
but by gentleness and kindness. All are assiduous in 
the discharge of their duties, and exhibit, while engaged 
in them, a sober mirth and contentment." 

Margaret was More's best loved daughter ; she repaid 
his affection with the most absolute devotion. Her rare 
mental endowments and pure and elevated nature moved 
him greatly, and in her girlhood as in her womanhood 
he watched over the growth and maturing of her culti- 
vated mind and sympathetic heart. Contrary to general 
expectation, she recovered from a very dangerous illness ; 
when Sir Thomas confessed that, had she been taken 
from him, he would wholly have withdrawn from worldly 
affairs. Upon her marriage she insisted that her husband 
should reside in a house next to her father's ; and when 
Sir Thomas was thrown into the Tower, on a charge of 
high treason, she did not rest until she had extorted 
permission to visit him. After that solemn scene of 
high judicial mockery, his trial and sentence, she met 
him at the Tower stairs, and received his parting benedic- 
tion. " As soon as she espied him," says his biographer, 
" she ran hastily unto him, and without consideration or 
care for herself, passing through the midst of the throng 
and guard of men, who with bills and halberts compassed 
him round, there openly in the sight of them all em- 
braced him, and took him about the neck and kissed 
him, not able to say any words but ' O my father ! O 



70 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



my father ! ' He, liking well her most natural and dear 
affection towards him, gave her his fatherly blessing ; 
telling her that whatsoever he should suffer, though he 
were innocent, yet it was not without the will of God ; 
and that He knew well enough all the secrets of her 
heart, counselling her to accommodate her will to God's 
blessed pleasure, and to be patient for his loss. 

" She was no sooner parted from him, and had gone 
scarce ten steps, when she, not satisfied with the former 
farewell, like one who had forgot herself, ravished with 
the entire love of so worthy a father, having neither 
respect to herself nor to the press of people about him, 
suddenly turned back, and ran hastily to him, and took 
him about the neck and divers times together kissed 
him ; whereat he spoke not a word, but carrying still his 
gravity, tears fell also from his eyes; yea, there were 
very few in all the troop who could refrain hereat from 
weeping, no, not the guard themselves. But at last with 
a full heart she was severed from him, at which time 
another of our women embraced him; and my aunt's 
maid, Dorothy Collis, did the like, of whom he said after, 
it was homely, but very lovingly done." 

Mary Granville. 

In the early part of the eighteenth century a very 
different standard of education was considered to meet 
the wants and capabilities of an English gentlewoman, if, at 
least, we may accept the evidence of Mrs. Delany in her 
well-known "Autobiography." Mary Granville — for such 



MARY GRANVILLE. 



was her maiden name — came of a good stock, being the 
great-granddaughter of that brilliant cavalier Sir Bevil 
Granville, who fell at Lansdowne Field, near Bath, fight- 
ing under Charles I.'s banner. She was also a niece of 
Lord Lansdowne ; and of such, in the belief of fashion- 
able society, is the kingdom of heaven ! At the age of 
six she was entrusted to the charge of a Mademoiselle 
Puelle, a French refugee of respectable character, who 
seems to have been much better fitted for her post than 
the majority of the schoolmistresses of the day. She 
received, we are told, not more than twenty pupils at 
a time. Under her felicitous auspices, Mary learned 
French and music, for both of which she appears to 
have had much natural aptitude. She was ten years old 
when she first heard and saw the great composer of The 
Messiah. " We had no better instrument in the house," 
she says, " than a little spinnet of mine, on which that 
great musician performed wonders. I was much struck 
with his playing, but struck as a child, not as a judge ; 
for, the moment he was gone, I seated myself to my 
instrument, and played the best lesson I had then learned. 
My uncle archly asked me whether I thought I should 
ever play as well as Mr. Handel. ' If I did not think I 
should,' cried I, ' I would burn my instrument ! ' Such 
was the innocent presumption of childish ignorance." 

When she was about fifteen years of age, a reverse of 
fortune — words which seem so simple, and mean so 
much ! — compelled her father to reduce his style of 
living, and retire into the country : a great disappoint- 



172 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

ment to a young lady who had been brought up with the 
expectation of becoming a maid of honour, who had 
been at one play and one opera, and thought the poet's 
description of the Elysian Fields trivial as compared with 
the pleasures of those entertainments. She was kept to 
her fixed routine of so many hours for music, French, 
reading, and writing; after which she was expected to 
sit down " to work." While wife and daughter plied 
their assiduous needles, the head of the household read 
aloud. In the evening, the minister of the parish would 
often call, and she was then required to join with her 
parents and their visitor in a quiet rubber. All her 
amusements were of an equally mild character. " I 
took great delight," she says, "in a closet I had, which 
was furnished with little drawings and cut paper of my 
own doing. I had a desk and shelves for my books." 
The monotony of her life was relieved, however, by a 
friendship which she formed with a neighbouring clergy- 
man's daughter, a girl of her own age. "She had an 
uncommon genius and intrepid spirit," says Mrs. Delany, 
" which, though really innocent, alarmed my father, and 
made him uneasy at my great attachment to her. He 
loved gentleness and reserve in the behaviour of women, 
and could not bear anything that had the appearance 
of being too free and masculine ; but as I was convinced 
of her innocence, I saw no fault in her. She entertained 
me with her wit, and she flattered me with her approba- 
tion, but by the improvement she has since made, I see 
she was not, at my first acquaintance, the perfect creature 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 173 

I thought her then. . . . Her extraordinary understand- 
ing, lively imagination, and humane disposition, which 
soon became conspicuous, at last reconciled my father 
to her." And there can be no doubt that she helped 
largely to form Mary Granville's character and develop 
her intellect at that critical time when girlhood is 
blossoming into maidenhood, and the prengurement of 
the coming woman is already visible. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 

Lady Mary Pierrepont, eldest daughter of Evelyn, 
Earl of Kingston (afterwards favoured with a ducal 
coronet), and of his wife, the Lady Mary Fielding, was 
born at Thoresby-in-Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, about 
1690. Her mother died when she was only four years 
old ; but her father took special charge of her education, 
and did his best to educe and foster the high intellectual 
qualities which, at an early age. she conspicuously dis- 
played. He was not less proud of her personal charms 
than of her mental endowments. It is on record that, 
one evening, in 1697, when present at a convivial 
gathering of the famous Kit Cat Club, — the beauties of 
the season having been freely toasted, — the Earl of 
Kingston rose and proposed, as La plus belle des plus 
belles, his daughter, Lady Mary. Some of the members 
demurred, on the ground that the rules of the Club 
prevented them from doing honour to a beauty whom 
they had never seen. " Then you shall see her ! " he 
exclaimed, and immediatelv sent an order for her to be 



174 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

finely dressed and brought to him at the tavern. On 
her arrival the child-beauty was welcomed with shouts 
of admiration : her claim was unanimously confirmed, — 
her health drunk with enthusiasm ; and her name, accord- 
ing to custom, engraved upon a drinking-giass. For my 
part I pity the tender child exposed to the rude roving 
glances of these men of fashion, and censure the father 
whose vanity forced upon her the exposure; but she 
herself appears to have been mightily pleased with it. 
" Pleasure," she wrote, later in life, " was too poor a 
word to express my sensations. They amounted to 
ecstasy. Never again throughout my life did I pass so 
happy an evening." 

In our palmy educational age, when Newnham and 
Girton are annually producing so abundant a crop of 
girl-graduates, we should set but small value upon Lady 
Mary's curriculum of studies ; yet was it in many respects 
superior to that of her young contemporaries. Probably 
she did not derive much of it from her instructors, but 
most from the large library at Thoresby, in the happy 
pastures of which she roamed at will. She acquired a 
knowledge of Greek and Latin, — and tested her classical 
proficiency by making a Latin version of the Ev^eipiStov 
of Epictetus. This was corrected by Bishop Burnet, to 
whom she was under considerable obligations, she writes, 
for '• condescending to direct the studies of a girl." Her 
reading, as with all quiet and self-taught minds, was 
exceedingly miscellaneous : nothing came amiss to 
her; and a good memory and a clear intelligence 




LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 175 



enabled her to retain and assort the mass of facts hei 
industry collected. Even the monster fictions of Mdlle 
Scuderi, — 

" Twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt," 

the perusal of which was possible only at a time when 
fine lords and finer ladies had but few books, and 
acknowledged fewer duties ; the whole library of Mrs. 
Lennox's "Female Quixote," " Cleopatre," "Clelie," 
" Artamene, ou le grand Cyrus," " Almahide," " Ibra- 
him, ou l'illustre Bassa," and others, " Englished " 
mostly by "persons of honour," were greedily devoured 
by the insatiable beauty. We learn, however, that her 
great favourite was a translation of Honore d'Urfe's 
"Astree," — a book which was once the delight of the 
courtiers of Henri Quatre. In a third page of this 
mighty work she wrote, in her finest caligraphy, a list 
of the characters, with a descriptive epithet applied to 
each, as thus : Diana the beautiful, Climene the volatile, 
Doris the sorrowful, Celadon the faithful, and Adamas 
the wise. 

The ponderous romances which had beguiled Lady 
Mary's leisure were long preserved by the care of " an 
excellent person," a domestic in the family of Lady 
Bute, her descendant. The spectacles of this good 
lady, we are told, might always be found in " Clelie," 
or "Cassandre," which she studied laboriously for six 
days in the week, making them next in value to the 
Bible and Tillotson's " Sermons ; " because they were 



176 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

all " about good and virtuous people, not like the wicked 
trash she now saw young folks get from circulating 
libraries." Deeply did she regret the loss of one romance 
which in beauty and interest outvied them all, namely, 
the "History of Hiempsal, King of Numidia." This 
she had read only once, and by no pains or search 
could she ever meet with it again. Nowadays we are 
too busy to devote our time to the reading of these 
ouvrages de longne haleine, and yet we might do worse. 
It may at least be said of them that they are chivalrous 
in tone and free from vicious meaning ; and that if they 
do not make the reader better, they certainly do not 
make him worse. Nor are they so wearisome as is 
generally supposed. The incidents are often ingenious 
and interesting ; and the narrative not infrequently 
assumes a picturesque character. The reader can 
always skip the conversations, which, however, are 
scarcely more artificial than Samuel Richardson's. I 
confess to have derived some entertainment from the 
many hundred pages of the " Grand Cyrus," and if 
any one blame me for my taste, I am prepared to take 
shelter under the example of Madame de Sevigne. 

When we think of these huge fictions, and of the time 
our ancestors devoted to their perusal, we are led to 
reflect upon one blessed possession which has been lost 
to the present generation. What has become of our 
Leisure? Who could now give to the sorrows of Cas- 
sandre or the love passages of Artamene the necessary 
hours? We are always goaded and tortured by the 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 177 



demon Haste. We have scarce time to think, much 
less to dream. Where now will you see a shepherd boy, 
is Sir Philip Sidney saw him, " piping as if he would 
riever grow old " ? Who now can bask on the sunny 
trill, or muse beneath the branches of the far-spreading 
Deech-tree, or sport with Amaryllis in the shade ? 
Anxieties, cares, responsibilities, press constantly upon 
us, and give us no rest ; all the world is on the move, 
and we must perforce move with it ; we are driven from 
spot to spot, with the Furies ever behind us. If we 
pause for a moment beneath the blue arch of heaven, 
we hear the swoop of their approaching wings, and 
resume that impetuous journey which men call life, with 
the painful knowledge that there can be no repose for 
us but the grave. 

All Lady Mary's girlish hours were not given up to 
the classics or to the old romances. She had to learn 
the fashionable accomplishments of dancing and riding, 
while no small part of the supervision of the great 
establishment at Thoresby fell to her share. As soon 
as she was strong enough, — and without physical 
robustness she could not have discharged the duties 
of the post, — she presided at her father's table. The 
mistress of a country house, — as we are reminded by 
Lady Louisa Stuart, Lady Mary's granddaughter and 
biographer, — sub Georgio firimo, had not only to per- 
suade and provoke her guests to eat voraciously, but 
to carve every dish on which their fancy rested, with 
her own hands. The higher her rank, the more indis- 



178 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

pensable was this onerous duty. Each joint was placed 
before her in turn, to be operated upon by her alone. 
The lords and squires on either hand were not permitted 
to offer her any assistance. The master of the house was 
seated opposite to her, but he must not act as croupier ; 
it was reserved for him to push the bottle after dinner. 
As for the crowd of guests who sat below the salt, the 
most inconsiderable among them, — the squire's younger 
brother, the chaplain who mumbled prayers and took 
the vacant hand at whist, the curate in rusty cassock 
from the neighbouring village, or the subaltern from the 
nearest military station, — if suffered through her neglect 
to help himself to a slice of the mutton that steamed 
at his end of the board, would have digested it as an 
affront, and gone home in dudgeon, half resolved to 
vote the wrong way at the next election. There were 
then professional carving-masters, who taught young 
ladies the art scientifically, and from one of these Lady 
Mary received instruction thrice a week, so as to be 
perfect on her father's public days. On which occasions, 
that she might execute her responsible task without 
delay or interruption, she was compelled to dine by 
herself an hour or two beforehand. Well, well, — if our 
forefathers had the advantage over us in Leisure, we 
have the advantage over them in Diners a la Russe ! 

I must take a glance at Lady Mary's friendships. 
Some among her dearest friends and correspondents 
were distinguished by their rank, beauty, or accomplish- 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 179 

ments : — the charming Lady Walpole, sister of the 
great Prime Minister ; a Mrs. Smith, daughter of the 
Whig Speaker Smith, who had been maid of honour 
to Queen Anne; and the wealthy heiress, Lady Anne 
Vaughan, the only child of Lord Carbury, last repre- 
sentative of a family distinguished in the annals of 
literature as having provided Jeremy Taylor with an 
asylum at Golden Grove. Lady Anne lived to be the 
broken-hearted wife of the third Duke of Bolton, 
well-known in later theatrical records as the lover and 
husband of Mistress Lavinia Fenton, the brilliant " Polly 
Peachem" of Gay's Beggars' Opera. But her chief 
confidante and truest friend, as friends go, was Mistress 
Anne Wortley Montagu, to whom her earliest letters 
were addressed. It is interesting to turn to these first 
proofs of that talent — rather let us say genius — for 
epistolary composition which has kept her memory 
green ; for we find in them the germs of that accuracy of 
observation, grace of diction, and epigrammatic terseness 
of style, which afterwards ripened into such consummate 
excellence. The following letters were written while 
she still stood on the threshold of womanhood, with all 
the freshness and purity of girlhood still about her. 

" To Mrs. Worthy, August 8, 1709. — I shall run mad 
— with what heart can people write, when they believe 
their letters will never be received? I have already 
writ you a very long scrawl, but it seems it never came 
to your hands ; I cannot bear to be accused of coldness 
by one whom I shall love all my life. This will, perhaps, 



180 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

miscarry as the last did ; how unfortunate am I if it does ! 
You will think I forget you, who are never out of my 
thoughts. You will fancy me stupid enough to neglect 
your letters, when they are the only pleasures of my 
solitude : in short, you will call me ungrateful and 
insensible, when I esteem you as I ought, in esteeming 
you above all the world. If I am not quite so unhappy 
as I imagine, and you do receive this, let me know it 
as soon as you can ; for till then I shall be in terrible 
uneasiness \ and let me beg you for the future, if you do 
not receive letters very constantly from me, [to] imagine 
the post-boy killed, imagine the mail burnt, or some 
other strange accident ; you can imagine nothing so 
impossible as that I forget you, my dear Mrs. Wortley. 
I know no pretence I have to your good opinion but 
my hearty desiring it ; I wish I had that imagination you 
talk of, to render me a fitting correspondent for you, 
who can write so well on everything. 

" I am now so much alone, I have leisure to pass 
whole days in reading, but am not at all proper for so 
delicate an employment as choosing you books. Your 
own fancy will better direct you. My study at present 
is nothing but dictionaries and grammars. I am trying 
whether it is possible to learn without a master ; I am 
not certain (and dare hardly hope) I shall make any 
great progress ; but I find the study so diverting, I am 
not only easy, but pleased with the solitude that indulges 
it. I forget there is such a place as London, and wish 
for no company but yours. You see, my dear, in making 



LADY MARY VVORTLEY MONTAGU. 181 

my pleasures consist of these unfashionable diversions, I 
am not of the number who cannot be easy out of the 
mode. I believe more follies are committed out of 
complaisance to the world, than in following our own 
inclinations — Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom 
always ; it is with some regret I follow it in all the 
impertinencies of dress ; the compliance is so trivial, it 
comforts me ; but I am amazed to see it consulted even 
in the most important occasions of our lives ; and that 
people of good sense in other things can make their 
happiness consist in the opinions of others, and sacrifice 
everything in the desire of appearing in fashion. I call 
all people who fall in love with furniture, clothes, and 
equipage, of this number, and I look upon them as no 
less in the wrong than when they were five years old, 
and doated on shells, pebbles, and hobby-horses : — I 
believe you will expect this letter to be dated from the 
other world, for sure I am you never heard an inhabitant 
of this talk so before. I suppose you expect, too, I 
should conclude with begging pardon for this extreme 
tedious and very nonsensical letter; quite contrary, I 
think you will be obliged to me for it. I could not 
better show my great concern for your reproaching me 
with neglect I know myself innocent of, than proving 
myself mad in three pages."* 

* It will increase the interest of the correspondence if I include 
Mrs. Wortley's reply, which is dated August 20th, 1709. It runs 
as follows : — 

' ' Dear Lady Mary will pardon my vanity ; I could not forbear 

13 



[82 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



Lady Mary's second letter to her admiring friend and 
correspondent is in a tenderer strain. 

"August 21, 1709. — When I said it cost nothing 
to write tenderly, I believe I spoke of another sex ; I 
am sure not of myself; 'tis not in my power (I would 
to God it was !) to hide a kindness where I have one, or 
dissemble it where I have none. I cannot help answer- 
ing your letter this minute, and telling you I infinitely 
love you, though, it may be, you'll call the one imperti- 
nence, and the other dissimulation ; but you may think 
what you please of me, I must eternally think the same 
things of you. 



reading to a Cambridge Doctor that was with me a few of those 
lines that did not make me happy till this week : where you talk 
of dictionaries and grammars, he stopped me, and said, ' The reason 
why you had more wit than any man was, that your mind had never 
been encumbered with any of those tedious authors ; that Cowley 
never submitted to the rules of grammar, and therefore excelled all 
of his own time in learning, as well as in wit ; that, without them, 
you would read with pleasure in two or three months ; but that if 
you persisted in the use of them, you would throw away your Latin 
in a year or two, and the commonwealth would have reason to 
mourn ; whereas, if I could prevail with you, it would be bound to 
thank you for a brighter ornament than any it could boast of.' It is 
not because I am public-spirited that I could not delay telling you 
what I believe would make you succeed in your attempt ; nor can 
I positively affirm it proceeds from fondness, but rather admiration. 
I think I love you too well to envy you ; but the love of one's self is 
in all so powerful, that it may be a doubt whether the most violent 
passion would prevail with me to forward you in the pursuit, did I 
imagine you wanted that accomplishment to set you above me. But 
since, without any addition, as you now are, I know there is so little 
hopes of coming near you, that if I loved you not at all, I should 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 183 

" I hope my dear Mrs. Wortley's showing my letter 
is in the same strain as her compliments, all meant for 
raillery, and I am not to take it as a thing really so ; 
but I'll give you as serious an answer as if 'twas all true. 

" When Mr. Cowley and other people (for I know 
several have learnt after the same manner) were in 
places where they had opportunity of being learned by 
word of mouth, I don't see any violent necessity of 
printed rules ; but being where, from the top of the 
house to the bottom, not a creature in it understands 

not be averse to raising you higher ; nor can all the good things you 
say of me make me think the distance to be less, and yet I must 
own they are very pleasing ; notwithstanding you say that when you 
wrote this last you were mad, which brings to my mind the other 
in which you say you are dull, so that you own when you are your- 
self, you have no such thoughts of me. Nay, should you in another, 
to convince me that you are in an interval, by being sensible that 
these shining qualities in you were designed to give splendour to a 
court, please the multitude, and do honour to nature, — should you 
tell me your recovery of your reason had not altered your opinion 
of me, there would still be a scruple ; and yet in spite of that too, 
your compliments would please. You may remember you once 
told me it was as easy to write kindly to a hobby-horse, as to a 
woman, nay, or a man. I should know, too, how diverting a scene 
it is (I forget where I met with it, but you can tell me) to make a 
ploughman sit on a throne, and fancy he is an emperor.* However, 
'tis a cheat so pleasing, I cannot help indulging it ; and to keep off 
the evil day as long as I can of being deceived, shall remain with 
truth and passion, Yours, Anne Wortley." 

It is needless to dwell on the marked inferiority of this laboured 
epistle to Lady Mary's charming, sensible, and witty compositions. 



* I suppose Mrs. Wortley has in her mind some vague recollection of the 
Induction to Shakespeare's Taming of tJie Shrew. 



184 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



so much as even good English, without the help of a 
dictionary or inspiration, I know no way of attaining to 
any language. Despairing of the last, I am forced to 
make use of the other, though I do verily believe I shall 
return to London the same ignorant soul I went from 
it ; but the study is a present amusement. I must 
own I have vanity enough to fancy, if I had anybody 
with me, without much trouble perhaps I might read. 

" What do you mean by complaining I never write to 
you in the quiet situation of mind I do to other people ? 
My dear, people never write calmly but when they write 
indifferently. That I should ever do so to you, I take 
to be entirely impossible ; I must be always very much 
pleased, or in very great affliction, as you tell me of 
your friendship, or unkindly doubt mine. I can never 
allow even prudence and sincerity to have anything to 
do with one another ; at least, I have always found it so 
in myself, who being devoted to the one, had never the 
least tincture of the other. What I am now doing is 
a very good proof of what I say : 'tis a plain undesigning 
truth — your friendship is the only happiness of my life ; 
and whenever I lose it, I have nothing to do but to take 
one of my garters and search for a convenient beam. 
You see how absolutely necessary it is for me to preserve 
it. Prudence is at the very time saying to me, Are you 
mad ? You won't send this dull, tedious, insipid, long 
letter to Mrs. Wortley, will you ? 'tis the direct way to 
tire out her patience : if she serves you as you deserve, 
she will first laugh very heartily, then tear the letter, and 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 185 

never answer it, purely to avoid the plague of such 
another : will her good nature for ever resist her judg- 
ment ? I hearken to these counsels, I allow 'em to be 
good, and then — I act quite contrary. No considera- 
tion can hinder me from telling you, my dear, dear 
Mrs. Wortley, nobody ever was so entirely, so faithfully, 
yours, as M. P. 

" I put in your lovers, for I don't allow it possible for 
a man to be so sincere as I am ; if there was such a 
thing, though, you would find it ; I submit therefore to 
your judgment." 

I shall venture to quote one more letter. 

"August 21, 1709. — I am infinitely obliged to you, 
my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the wit, beauty, and other 
fine qualities you so generously bestow upon me. Next 
to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person 
from whom I would choose to receive gifts and graces ; 
I am very well satisfied to owe them to your own 
delicacy of imagination, which represents to you the 
idea of a fine lady, and you have good nature enough 
to fancy I am she. All this is mighty well, but you do 
not stop there ; imagination is boundless. After giving 
me. imaginary wit and beauty, you give me imaginary 
passions, and you tell me I'm in love : if I am 'tis a 
perfect sin of ignorance, for I don't so much as know 
the man's name. I have been studying these three 
hours, and cannot guess who you mean. I passed the 
days of Nottingham races at Thoresby, without seeing, 



1 86 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

or even wishing to see, one of the sex. Now, if I am 
in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so in- 
dustriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover 
it so much to other people. Tis against all form to 
have such a passion as that, without giving one sigh 
for the matter. Pray tell the name of him I love, 
that I may (according to the laudable custom of lovers) 
sigh to the woods and groves hereabouts, and teach it 
to the echo. You see, being I am in love, I am willing 
to be so in order and rule ; I have been turning over 
God knows how many books to look for precedents. 

" Recommend an example to me ; and, above all, 
let me know whether 'tis most proper to walk in the 
woods, increasing the winds with my sighs, or to sit by 
a purling stream, swelling the rivulet with my tears ; 
may be, both may do well in their turns : — but to be a 
minute serious, what do you mean by this reproach of 
inconstancy? I confess you give me several good 
qualities I have not, and I am ready to thank you for these, 
but then you must not take away those few I have. 
No, I will never exchange them : take back the beauty 
and wit you bestow upon me, leave me my own medio- 
crity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my 
sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing ; 'tis all 
1 have to recommend me to the esteem either of others 
or myself. How should I despise myself if I could 
think I was capable of either inconstancy or deceit ! 
I know not how I may appear to other people, nor how 
much my face may belie my heart, but 1 know that I 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 187 

never was or can be guilty of dissimulation or incon- 
stancy, — you will think this vain, but 'tis all that I 
pique myself upon. Tell me you believe me, and 
repent of your harsh censure. Tell it me in pity to my 
uneasiness, for you are one of those few people about 
whose good opinion I am in pain. I have always took 
so little care to please the generality of the world, that 
I am never mortified or delighted by its reports, which 
is a piece of stoicism born with me ; but I cannot be one 
minute easy while you think ill of 

" Your faithful M. P. 

" This letter is a good deal grave, and, like other grave 
things, dull; but I won't ask pardon for what I can't 
help." 

Mistress Wortley had a brother named Edward, — a 
grave, reserved, and scholarly young man, endowed with 
considerable abilities, which he had cultivated not unsuc- 
cessfully. He had a strong clear judgment and a solid 
understanding. For the trivial pursuits of the fine 
gentlemen of his day, he had a supreme contempt. 
While 

" In various talk th' instructive hours they past, 
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last ; 
One speaks the glory of the British Queen, 
And one describes a charming Indian screen ; 
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes ; 
At every word a reputation dies. 
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, 
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that," — 



1 88 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

he studied some foreign language, or undertook some 
philosophical discussion. He wrote verses, and devoured 
the belles lettres ; he loved the company of men of taste 
and learning, such as Addison, Garth, Congreve, and Sir 
Richard Steele. Such a man was necessarily something 
of a misogynist. He shrank from the society of ladies 
who could play cards unweariedly and circulate scandal 
assiduously, but were ignorant of every subject of interest 
and importance. On first seeing Lady Mary, he pro- 
bably ranked her among these butterflies of the gay world ; 
he certainly manifested towards her a contemptuous 
indifference. There was no doubt something of the 
coquette in her nature — as there is, I fancy, in that of 
every pretty woman — for she had fed on the sweet manna 
of flattery from her earliest years, and desired and 
expected to see at her feet all whom she honoured with 
her regard. As few, if any, resisted her power, she must 
have experienced her first mortification when she dis- 
covered that her charms of manner and person made no 
impression on the brother of her friend. 

But one day while Wortley lounged in his sister's 
boudoir longer than he was wont, a visitor was announced, 
and Lady Mary entered before he could retire. Forced 
to join in the conversation which ensued, he soon owned 
to himself that her beauty was even less attractive than 
her ready tongue, her fascination of manner than her wit, 
brilliancy, and learning. Here was a woman unlike all 
other women ; a woman who understood Latin and 
Greek, and translated Epictetus ; a woman who had 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 18$ 

formed opinions of her own, and knew how to express 
them in language not less accurate than lively ! His 
astonishment was great, his pleasure greater. Finding 
that she had not read Quintus Curtius, an author whom 
even the learned ladies of the Victorian age probably 
ignore, he sent her a " superb edition " a few days after- 
wards, with these lines written in the first leaf: — 

" Beauty like this had vanquished Persia shown, 
The Macedon had laid his empire down, 
And polished Greece obeyed a barbarous throne. 
Had wit so bright adorned a Grecian dame, 
The am'rous youth had lost his thirst for fame, 
Nor distant India sought through Syria's plain ; 
But to the Muses' stream with her had run, 
And thought her lover more than Ammon's son." 

This is not the place for love-stories, but a love-story 
beginning with " Quintus Curtius " and compliments in 
heroic couplets must be considered exceptional. The 
heart of young Mr. Wortley was really moved ; what at 
first was a feeling of admiring surprise developed into a 
genuine passion, of the sincerity of which he was natu- 
rally anxious to convince Lady Mary. He was fortunate 
in the good offices of his sister, who pressed his suit with 
as much earnestness as if, having changed her sex, like 
Terisius, she were wooing for herself. To kindle a man's 
love to a proper degree of fervour, a little jealousy is 
indispensable; and from the following letter, dated 
September 5th, 1709, I gather that the stimulus was not 
wholly wanting : — 

" My dear Mistress Wortley," she writes, "you have 



I 



190 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

read that a man who, with patience, hears himself called 
heretic, can never be esteemed a good Christian. To be 
capable of preferring the despicable wretch you mention 
to Mr. Wortley, is as ridiculous — if not as criminal — as 
forsaking the Deity to worship a calf. Don't tell me 
anybody ever had so mean an opinion of my inclinations ; 
'tis among the number of those things I would forget. 
My tenderness is always built upon my esteem, and 
when the foundation perishes, it falls." 

Mrs. Wortley replied in language which, I think, the 
brother must have "inspired"; for it is difficult to 
believe that one woman in writing to another would 
gravely inform her that she could no more utter a dull 
thought than put on a look that was not beautiful ! or 
would seriously assure her, what no woman believes of 
any of her sex — that she was " altogether perfection.'' 
These were evidently the ecstatic outbursts of the 
enamoured Mr. Wortley. She continues, in the same 
rapturous strain : — " 'Tis to this happy disposition of 
being pleased with a variety of new objects, that we owe 
that wit of yours which is so surprising ; and to this 
alone I am indebted for the irrepressible delight in the 
present enjoyment of your favour ; and it would be 
extravagant in me to call it either your fault or my mis- 
fortune. I wish the most happy person now in being," 
(her brother,) "whom I have often discovered to be so 
in spite of your art to hide it, may be as able to make 
this reflection at the Nottingham race as I, who am not 
subdued by so strong a passion of that sort. . . Such 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 191 

passions as those, where there is an object like Lady 
Mary, leave no room for cool reflections ; and I wish he 
may not be so far overcome by his fears for the future, as 
to forget what a favourite of fortune he is in the present 
possession of so great a bliss." 

Thus, so far as the two lovers were concerned, the 
course of true love ran very smoothly; but the affections 
of Lady Mary were not so deeply engaged as to prevent 
her from continuing her lettered pursuits. We find her, 
in July 1 7 10, forwarding her translation of Epictetus 
to Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, and accompany- 
ing it with a letter of wholly unusual interest. I do not 
think that many women of her time could write with 
more, or with as much good sense, and with so just an 
idea of the true scope of female education. Even at 
the present day her words are not wholly inapplicable. 

" My sex," she writes, "is usually forbid studies of this 
nature, and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere 
that we are sooner pardoned any excesses of that, than 
the least pretensions to reading or good sense. We are 
permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening 
and effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects are 
every way indulged, and it is looked upon, as in a degree 
criminal, to improve our reason, or fancy we have any. 
We are taught to place all our art in adorning our 
outward forms, and permitted without reproach to carry 
that custom even to extravagancy ; while our minds are 
entirely neglected, and, by disuse of reflection, filled 



192 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes are daily 
entertained with. This notion, so long established and 
industriously upheld, makes it more ridiculous to go out 
of the common road, and forces one to find us many 
excuses, as if it were a thing altogether criminal, not to 
play the fool in concert with other women of quality, 
whom birth and leisure only serve to render them the 
most useless and most worthless part of the creation. 
There is hardly a character in the world more despicable, 
or more liable to universal ridicule, than that of a learned 
woman ; these words imply, according to the received 
sense, a talking, impertinent, vain, and conceited creature. 
I believe that nobody will deny that learning may have 
this effect, but it must be a very superficial degree of it. 
Erasmus was certainly a man of great learning and good 
sense, and he seems to have my opinion of it when he 
says, ' Fcemina quae vere sapit, non videtur sibi sapere ; 
contra, qua, cum nihil sapiat sibi videtur sapere, ea demum 
bis stulta est.'' " 

To be sure, some of Lady Mary's contemporaries could 
have written as learnedly, and have sprung upon Bishop 
Burnet as apposite Latin quotations ; but I know of 
none who could have written with more solid sense, and 
I doubt whether any had formed so high and just an 
ideal of the sphere, claims, and duties of woman. And I 
think we shall find the clue to all that was strange, 
perplexing, and regrettable in her later life, to all thai 
was wayward in conduct and audacious in expression, in 
this attitude of hostility which she assumed at the outs** 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 193 

to the commonly received notion of what was woman's 
place in society. She claimed for her sex an indepen- 
dent position ; in asserting that independence for herself 
she was not unnaturally led to display an excess of bold- 
ness. But it is to her honou that throughout her career 
she stood forward as the ur. flinching champion of her 
sex : may we not say, she was its martyr ? 

Her strong intellect, which, had it been more sym- 
pathetic, might have expanded into genius, rebelled 
against the social tyranny which restricted woman to the 
narrowest possible circle of occupations, degraded her 
into the helot of Fashion, and deprived her of every 
field for the exercise of her choicest gifts. Upon this 
question she was in advance of her age ; and hence, I 
suspect, much of the opprobrium which that age lavished 
upon her. Not that Lady Mary held those ''advanced" 
views as to " Women's Rights " with which American 
evangelists have of late made us familiar. She writes 
with calmness and moderation to Bishop Burnet : — 

" I am not now arguing for an equality of the two 
sexes. I do not doubt but that God and nature have 
thrown us into an inferior rank ; we are a lower part of 
the creation, we owe obedience and submission to the 
superior sex, and any woman who suffers her vanity and 
folly to deny this, rebels against the law of the Creator 
and indisputable order of nature ;* but there is a worse 



* Lady Mary writes as if the "law of the Creator" and the 
"indisputable order of nature" were separate things, but the "order 
of nature " must necessarily be a law from its Creator. 



194 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

effect than this, which follows the careless education 
given to women of quality, its being so easy for any man 
of sense (?) that finds it either his interest or pleasure 
to corrupt them. The common method is to begin by 
attacking their religion ; they bring them a thousand 
fallacious arguments, while their excessive ignorance 
hinders them from replying ; and, I speak now from 
my own knowledge and conversation among them, 
there are more Atheists among the fine ladies than the 
lowest sort of rakes ; and the same ignorance that 
generally works out into excess of superstition, exposes 
them to the snare of any who have a fancy to carry them 
to t'other extreme." 

Into Lady Mary's later life it is scarcely our province 
to enter j and yet the study of it would afford an inter- 
esting commentary on the experiences of her girlhood. 
We have seen that that girlhood was wholly without 
those sweet and tender influences which emanate from 
a Christian home. At an early age she was deprived of 
the care and counsel of a mother. Her father was a 
hard, proud, worldly man, whose teaching was not of a 
kind to counterbalance the defects of her character ; and 
all- her surroundings were unfavourable to the growth of 
the purer and holier affections. It is not marvellous 
that she matured into what is known as a woman of the 
world — very brilliant, very clever, very courageous, self- 
controlled and self-reliant, boldly contemptuous of 
society and social conventionalities, — but with no secret 
spring of love and tenderness in that cold and indifferent 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 195 



heart. Yet it is clear that she was capable of deep 
feeling, and had her early lot fallen in pleasanter places, 
she would have become, I think, one of the brightest and 
most attractive, as she was one of the most remarkable, 
of Englishwomen. We laugh at the old commonplaces 
"Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," and yet 
what a world of truth lies in them ! How surely a 
woman's womanhood is the natural reflexion, or rather 
the spontaneous growth, of her childhood ! Whether the 
bowl hits the mark, depends — does it not ? — on the bias 
which is given to it in its early course. Take away the 
purifying atmosphere of a happy Christian home; take 
away the wise counsel and example of parents anxious 
to nurture their children in the law of the Lord ; take 
away the daily study of God's word and the benediction 
that comes from praise and prayer, — and then the child 
will grow into the cold, hard, worldly woman, whose life 
is equally without a blessing for herself and for those 
around or dependent upon her. 

Mistress Mary Wortley died in 17 10, and after this 
event Lady Mary and Mr. Wordey entered into direct 
correspondence with each other. Yet it would seem 
that the sister's death exercised no favourable influence 
upon the brother's suit. No longer swayed or counselled 
by her friend, Lady Mary felt herself free to examine her 
lover's character independently, and to investigate the 
nature of her own feelings. The result was a conviction 
that she respected and esteemed rather than loved him, 
and that in the character of each existed antagonistic 



i<)6 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

elements, which would probably operate against the 
happiness of wedded life. As for Mr. Wortley, his 
letters show that at this time he was animated by a 
strong and deep attachment, and that Lady Mary's 
change of tone provoked him to outbreaks of jealous 
irritability or fits of depression. Their correspondence, 
therefore, assumes very frequently a contentious tone, 
and they were always rushing into quarrels and making 
them up. It would have been infinitely better for both 
if they could have agreed to part; but Lady Mary shrank 
from pronouncing a final and decided negative, and Mr. 
Wortley refused to be discouraged by her caprices. Here 
is a specimen of Lady Mary's love-letters. It is well 
and cleverly written, but the earnestness of true affection 
is wholly wanting. 

" I intended to make no answer to your letter ; it was 
something very ungrateful, and I resolved to give over 
all thoughts of you. I could easily have performed that 
resolve some time ago, but then you took pains to please 
me ; now you have brought me to esteem you, you make 
use of that esteem to give me uneasiness, and I have the 
displeasure of seeing I esteem a man that dislikes me. 
Farewell, then, since you will have it so ; I renounce all 
the ideas I have so long flattered myself with, and will 
entertain my fancy no longer with the imaginary pleasure 
of pleasing you. How much wiser are all those women 
I have despised than myself ! In placing their happiness 
in trifles, they have placed it in what is attainable. I 
fondly thought fine clothes and gilt coaches, balls, operas, 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 197 

and public adoration, rather the fatigues of life; and 
that true happiness was justly denned by Mr. Dry den 
(pardon the romantic air of repeating verses), when 
he says, 

" 'Whom Heaven would bless it does from pomp remove, 
And makes their wealth in privacy and love. ' 

These notions had corrupted my judgment as much as 
Mrs. Biddy Tipkins '. According to this scheme, I pro- 
posed to pass my life with you. I yet do you the justice 
to believe if any man could have been contented with this 
manner of living, it would have been you. Your indiffer- 
ence to me does not hinder me from thinking you capable 
of tenderness and the happiness of friendship ; but I find 
it is not in me you'll ever have them ; you think me all 
that is detestable : you accuse me of want of sincerity 
and generosity. To convince you of your mistake, I'll 
show you the last extremes of both. 

" While I foolishly fancied you loved me (which, I 
confess, I had never any great reason for, more than that 
I wished it), there is no condition of life I could not 
have been happy in with you, so very much 1 liked you 
— I might say loved, since it is the last thing I'll ever 
say to you. This is telling you sincerely my greatest 
weakness ; and now I will oblige you with a new proof 
of generosity — I'll never see you more. I shall avoid all 
public places ; and this is the last letter I shall send. If 
you write, be not displeased if I send it back unopened. 
I shall force my inclinations to oblige yours; and 

14 



198 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

remember then you have told me I could not oblige you 
more by refusing you. Had I intended ever to see you 
again, I durst not have sent this letter." 

This is very clever and ingenious, but it is wholly de- 
ficient in sincerity. Its polished sentences and epigram- 
matic phrases " smell of the lamp;" they do not thrill 
with the earnestness of true passion. The letter is an 
interesting composition, as that of a clever woman who 
admires and even esteems the man to whom she writes ; 
does not wish to lose, and yet is not particularly anxious 
to retain him ; is conscious she does not love, and yet 
would rather not be suspected of indifference. True 
passion is not so solicitous about the choice of an epithet 
or the turn of a period. 

Mr. Wortley, meanwhile, approached Lady Mary's 
father, who at first received his proposals favourably, 
but rejected them contumeliously when the question of 
settlements had to be discussed. Mr. Wortley was an 
enemy to the notion of primogeniture, and refused to 
settle his estates on any one child as exclusive heir to the 
prejudice of the others. He offered to make as good a 
provision for his wife as he could, but would not consent 
to reserve his landed property for "a son who, for aught 
he knew, might prove unworthy to possess it — might be 
a spendthrift, an idiot, or a villain." Lady Mary's father, 
on the other hand, said that " these philosophic theories 
were very fine, but his grandchildren should not run the 
risk of being left beggars." 

Obstacles seem to have infused more warmth into 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 199 

Lady Mary's sentiments, and the following letter is of a 
higher strain and deeper note than the preceding : — 

" I thought," she writes to her lover, " to return no 
answer to your letter, but I find I am not so wise as I 
thought myself. I cannot forbear fixing my mind a little 
on that expression, though perhaps the only insincere 
one in your whole letter — ' I would die to be secure of 
your heart, though but for a moment;' — were this but 
true, what is there I would not do to secure you ? 

"I will state the case as plainly to you as I can; and 
then ask yourself if you use me well. I have showed, in 
every action of my life, an esteem for you that at least 
challenges a grateful regard. I have trusted my repu- 
tation in your hands ; I have made no scruple of giving 
you, under my own hand, an assurance of my friendship 
After all this, I exact nothing from you ; if you find it 
inconvenient for your affairs to take so small a fortune, 
I desire you to sacrifice nothing to me ; I pretend no 
tie upon your honour : but, in recompense for so clear 
and so disinterested a proceeding, must I ever receive 
injuries and ill usage ? 

" I have not the usual pride of my sex ; I can bear 
being told I am in the wrong, but tell it me gently. 
Perhaps I have been indiscreet ; I came young into the 
hurry of the world ; a great innocence and an undesigning 
gaiety may possibly have been construed coquetry and 
a desire of being followed, though never meant by me. 
I cannot answer for the observations that may be made 
on me ; all who are malicious attack the careless and 



200 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

defenceless : I own myself to be both. I know not 
anything I can say more to show my perfect desire of 
pleasing you and making you easy, than to proffer to be 
confined with you in what manner you please. Would 
any woman but me renounce all the world for one? or 
would any man but you be insensible of such a proof of 
sincerity ? " M. P." 

On finding her engagement to Mr. Wortley regarded 
unfavourably by her father, Lady Mary resolved to break 
it off; but as he continued to write, and to implore her 
to reply, the correspondence continued. But on her 
part it still lacked the glow of tenderness ; her letters 
glittered with felicities of expression, but no doubt Mr. 
Wortley would have preferred a little more passion and 
a little less rhetoric, more of the sympathetic lover and 
less of the clever and accomplished letter-writer : — 

" I have this minute received your two letters. I know 
not how to direct to you, whether to London or the 
country ; or if in the country, to Durham or Wortley. 
Tis very likely you'll never receive this. I hazard a 
great deal if it falls into other hands, and I write for all 
that. I wish, with all my soul, I thought as you do ; I 
endeavour to convince myself by your arguments, and 
am sorry my reason is so obstinate, not to be deluded 
into an opinion that 'tis impossible a man can esteem a 
woman. I suppose I should then be very easy at your 
thoughts of me ; I should thank you for the wit and 
beauty you give me, and not be angry at the follies and 






LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 201 

weaknesses ; but, to my infinite affliction, I can believe 
neither one nor t'other. One part of my character is 
not so good, nor t'other so bad, as you fancy it. Should 
we ever live together, you would be disappointed both 
ways ; you would find an easy equality of temper you do 
not expect, and a thousand faults you do not imagine. 
You think, if you married me, I should be passionately 
fond of you one month, and of somebody else the next : 
neither would happen. I can esteem, I can be a friend, 
but I don't know whether I can love. Expect all that 
is complaisant and easy, but never what is fond, in me. 
Zou judge very wrong of my heart, when you suppose 
me capable of views of interest, and that anything could 
oblige me to flatter anybody. Was I the most indigent 
matron in the world, I should answer you as I do now, 
without adding or diminishing. I am incapable of art, 
and 'tis because I will not be capable of it. Could I 
deceive one minute, I should never regain my own good 
opinion; and who could bear to live with one they 
despised ? 

" If you can resolve to live with a companion that will 
have all the deference due to your superiority of good 
sense, and that your proposals can be agreeable to those 
on whom I depend, I have nothing to say against them. 

" As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great 
pleasure, and could easily quit London on your account ; 
but a retirement to the country is not so disagreeable to 
me as I know a few months would make it tiresome to 
you. When people are tied for life, 'tis their mutual 



202 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



interest not to grow weary of one another. If I had all 
the personal charms that I want, a face is too slight a 
foundation for happiness. You would be soon tired with 
seeing every day the same thing. When you saw nothing 
else, you would have leisure to remark all the defects ; 
which would increase in proportion as the novelty 
lessened, which is always a great charm. I should have 
the displeasure of seeing a coldness, which, though I 
could not reasonably blame you for, being involuntary, 
yet it would render me uneasy ; and the more, because 
I know a love may be revived which absence, incon- 
stancy, or even infidelity has extinguished ; but there is 
no returning from a degofit given by satiety. 

" I should not choose to live in a crowd : I could be 
very well pleased to be in London, without making a 
great figure, or seeing above eight or nine agreeable 
people. Apartments, table, etc., are things that never 
come into my head. But I will never think of anything 
without the consent of my family, and advise you not to 
fancy a happiness in entire solitude, which you would 
find only fancy. 

" Make no answer to this, if you can like me on my 
own terms. Tis not to me you must make the proposals ; 
if not, to what purpose is our correspondence ? 

" However, preserve me your friendship, which I think 
of with a great deal of pleasure, and some vanity. If 
ever you see me married, I flatter myself you'll see 
a conduct you would not be sorry your wife should 
imitate. "M. P." 



LADY MARY WORT LEY MONTAGU. 203 

It is necessary we should now take a leaf out of the 
correspondence as furnished by Mr. Montagu. Here is a 
letter addressed to the capricious beauty one Saturday 
morning : — 

" Every time you see me gives me a fresh proof of your 
not caring for me ; yet I beg you will meet me once 
more. How could you pay me that great compliment of 
your loving the country for life, when you would not stay 
with me a few minutes longer ? Who is the happy man 
you went to? I agree with you, I am often so dull I 
cannot explain my meaning ; but will not own that the 
expression was so very obscure, when I said if I had you 
I should act against my opinion. Why, need I add, I 
see what is best for me, I condemn what I do, and yet I 
fear I must do it. If you can't find it out, that you are 
going to be unhappy, ask your sister, who agrees with 
you in everything else, and she will convince you of your 
rashness in this. She knows you don't care for me, and 
that you will like me less and less every year; perhaps 
every day of your life. You may, with a little care, 
please another as well, and make him less timorous. It 
is possible I too may please some of those that have but 
little acquaintance ; and if I should be preferred by a 
woman for being the first among her companions, it 
would give me as much pleasure as if I were the first man 
in the world. Think again, and prevent a misfortune 
from falling on both of us. 

" When you are at leisure, I shall be as ready to end 
all, as I was last night, when I disobliged one that will 



2o 4 CHILD -LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

do me hurt, by crossing his desires, rather than fail of 
meeting you. Had I imagined you would have left me 
without finishing, I had not seen you. Now you have 
been so free before Mrs Steele — [the "dear Prue" of Mr. 
afterwards Sir Richard, Steele] — you may call upon her, 
or send for her to-morrow or next day. Let her dine 
with you, or go to visit shops. Hyde Park, or other 
diversions. You may bring her home, I can be in the 
house, reading, as I often am, though the master is 
abroad. If you will have her visit you first, I will get 
her to go to-morrow. I think a man, or a woman, is 
under no engagement till the writings are sealed; but 
it looks like indiscretion even to begin a treaty without a 
probability of concluding it. When you hear of all my 
objections to you, and to myself, you will resolve against 
me. Last night you were much upon the reserve ; I 
see you can never be thoroughly intimate with me ; 'tis 
because you have no pleasure in it. You can be easy, 
and complaisant, as you have sometimes told me ; but 
never think that enough to make me easy, unless you 
refuse me. 

"Write a line this evening, or early to-morrow. If 1 
don't speak plain, do you understand what I write ? 
Tell me how to mend the style, if the fault is in that. 
If the characters are not plain, I can easily mend them. 
I always comprehend your expressions, but would give a 
great deal to know what passes in your heart. 

"In you I might possess youth, beauty, and all things 
that can charm. It is possible that they may strike me 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 205 

less, after a time ; but I may then consider I have once 
enjoyed them in perfection ; that they would have 
decayed as soon in any other. You see this is not your 
case. You will think you might have been happier. 
Never engage with a man, unless you propose to yourself 
the highest satisfaction from him and none other." 

There is evidently a throb of genuine feeling in this 
letter, though its tone is not altogether pleasant, and we 
cannot conceive of it as written by a Christian gentleman 
to a Christian gentlewoman. The writer's waywardness, 
we had almost said churlishness, of disposition may well 
have awakened in Lady Mary's mind some misgivings 
as to her future happiness. 

Meanwhile, affairs at home remained in statu quo. 
The Marquis persisted in his opposition to a son-in-law 
who might cut oft" his grandson with a shilling ; Lady- 
Mary in her refusal of a suitor for whom she did not 
entertain the slightest esteem. The father was indignant 
at her presumption in daring to choose for herself, and 
coldly informed her that unless she dismissed Mr. Wortley, 
he should cut her off with a shilling. She then expressed 
a resolve to live and die unmarried ; .but this vow of 
virginity the Marquis met by an intimation that he should 
immediately exile her to some remote residence, and 
that at his death she would receive only a very moderate 
annuity. In the Georgian days fathers were unaccus- 
tomed to filial disobedience, or at least were not wont to 
yield to it ; and believing that she would ultimately 
surrender, the Marquis began the necessary preparations 



206 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

for her marriage. The day was fixed; the wedding 
clothes were purchased ; the settlements were drawn up ; 
when the comedy was abruptly converted into a farce by 
the sudden elopement of Lady Mary with Mr. Montagu. 
They were privately married by special license on the 
1 2th of August, 17 1 2. 



CHAPTER IV. 
SOME MINOR LITERARY LIGHTS. 

katharine philips — letitia pilkington 

elizabeth rowe. 

Katharine Philips. 

READERS of the later poetry of the seventeenth 
century will have come upon frequent panegyrical 
allusions to a certain " Orinda," whose brilliant acquire- 
ments, if these writers might be believed, would have 
entitled her to immortality as the tenth Muse. Thus, 
Cowley, whom we should be inclined to respect as a critic, 
exclaims : 

" Of female poets who had names of old, 

Nothing is shown, but only told, 
And all we hear of them perhaps may be 
Male flattery only and male poetry. 
Few minutes did their beauty's lightning waste, 
The thunder of their voice did longer last, 

But that too soon was past. 
The certain proofs of our Orinda's wit 
In her own lasting characters are writ, 
And they will long my praise of them survive, 

Tho' long perhaps too that may live." 






2o8 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

As if this were altogether unsatisfactory and inadequate 
as a tribute of praise, he writes 

" Orinda does our boasted sex outdo, 
Not in wit only, but in virtue too." 

The Earl of Roscommon, in his " Essay on Poetry," 
writes with much keenness of perception and delicacy of 
discrimination. Well, he, too, in his prologue to 
"Orinda's " translation of Corneille's " Pompee," breaks 
out into raptures : — 

" But you, bright nymph, give Caesar leave to woo 
The greatest wonder of the world but you, 
And hear a Muse, who has that hero taught 
To speak as gen'rously as e'er he fought : 
Whom eloquence from such a theme deters 
All tongues but English, and all pens but hers. 
By the just Fates your sex is doubly blest, — 
You conquered Caesar, and you praise him best." 

And again, in some stanzas " after Horace,'' he is seized 
with an equal rapture of laudation : — 

" While, ruled by a resistless fire, 
Our great Orinda I admire, 
The hungry wolves, that see me stray 
Unarmed and single, run away. 

" Set me in the remotest place 
That ever Neptune did embrace, 
When there her image fills my breast, 
Helicon is not half so blest. 

" Leave me upon some Libyan plain, 
So she my fancy entertain, 
And when the thirsty monsters meet, 
They'll all pay homage at my feet. 



KATHARINE PHILIPS. 209 

" The magic of Orinda's name 

Not only can their fierceness tame, 
But if that mighty word I did rehearse, 
They seem submissively to roar in verse." 

This is exquisite fooling, to be sure ; but one would 
naturally suppose that a lady credited with such magic- 
working powers must be a poet of no mean fame and no 
ordinary excellence. Even the sober Rowe, the dramatist, 
writing of her when praise could no longer propitiate, 
and he was under no temptation to flatter, since she had 
passed beyond the reach of flattery, could still allude to 
" Orinda " in the glowing terms which now-a-days we 
might employ for a Mrs. Browning : — 

" Orinda came, 
To ages yet to come an honoured name ! " 

Alas, by how few is the name even remembered, much 
less honoured ! — 

" To virtuous themes her well- tuned lyre she strung, 
Of virtuous themes in easy numbers sung." 

Had the writer stopped here, all would have been well ; 
the criticism is moderate, and no one would be disposed 
to contest it. But he bursts into a dithyrambic strain : — ■ 

" Horace and Pompey in her line appear 
With all the worth that Rome did once revere ; 
Much to Corneille they owe, and much to her, 
Her thoughts, her numbers, and her fire the same. 
She soared as high, and equalled all his fame. 
Though France adores the bard, nor envies Greece 
The costly buskins of her Sophocles, 
More we expected, but untimely death 
Soon stopped her rising glories with her breath." 



210 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

The lady thus rapturously celebrated was a Mrs. 
Katharine Philips. The daughter of a Mr. John Fowler, 
a London merchant, she was born in 1632. At an early 
age she was sent to a boarding-school at Hackney, where 
she showed herself possessed of considerable talents. 
Aubrey tells us that she was very apt to learn, and made 
verses at school, — so that, like Pope, 

" She lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." 

She devoted herself to religious duties when very 
young, and would pray in solitude for an hour together. 
It is said that she had read the Bible through before she 
was five years old ; which seems incredible ; but at all 
events it is impossible that she should have understood 
it. She could repeat without a mistake many chapters 
and passages of Scripture ; was a frequent hearer of 
sermons, which she would bring away entire in her 
memory. Unaided by any master she gained a complete 
knowledge of the French language, and she undertook 
the study of Italian with the assistance of a friend, Sii 
Charles Cotterel, to whom, under the name of Poliarchus, 
many of her published letters are addressed. 

These are all the particulars I can gather in reference 
to her early years. From her works it is evident that she 
was a woman of admirable temper, of refined taste, of 
quick sensibilities. She married a Mr. James Philips, of 
the Priory, Cardigan, who appears to have been decidedly 
her inferior in abilities. Her energies were frequently 
addressed to the task of extricating him from difficulties, 
and her life would probably have been an unhappy one 



KATHARINE PHILIPS. 



but for the pleasure she derived from the cultivation of 
her talent as a versifier. It was fated, however, to be very- 
brief: she died of small pox, in June 1664, being then 
but thirty-one years of age. 

Her poetical effusions were published, without her 
knowledge or consent, and much to her annoyance, in 
the previous year ; and we have seen what an extraor- 
dinary amount of praise they received from her contem- 
poraries. I cannot say that the praise was deserved. 
She writes like an accomplished woman, with ease and 
correctness ; but in all her poems it is impossible to find 
one elevated or original thought, one novel image, or 
felicitous expression. She did quite right in being angry 
at their publication ; and the only explanation I can 
afford of the unbounded panegyric poured forth upon 
them is, that in Orinda's day it was thought a wonder for 
a woman to be able to write at all ! The happiest thing 
I can meet with in her " poems " is the following, which 
has certainly an epigrammatic neatness : — 

" 'Tis true our life is but a long disease, 
Made up of real pain and seeming ease. 
You stars ! who those entangled fortunes give, 
Oh, tell me why 
It is so hard to die, 

Yet such a task to live ! 

' ' If with some pleasure we our griefs betray, 
It costs us dearer than it can repay ; 
For Time or Fortune all things so devours, 
Our hopes are crost, 
Or else the object lost, 

Ere we can call it ours." 



212 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

At the instigation of Lords Orrery, Ormond, and 
Roscommon, Orinda (as she loved to call herself) trans- 
lated Corneille's " Pompee," and the translation seems to 
have been received with as much honour as if it had been 
an original work. She also translated the " Horace * of 
Corneille, Sir John Denham, with unblushing assurance, 
adding a fifth act ! It was performed at Court, the 
characters being represented by princes and nobles ; and 
to do her further honour the prologue was spoken by 
the handsome young Duke of Monmouth. 

Her letters are not devoid of merit ; they are written 
with vivacity, and just observations are expressed in a 
clear and cultured style. But her chief claim on the 
respect of posterity lies in the fact that she was honoured 
with the friendship of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who, in his 
" Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of 
Friendship," dedicated to her, appears to allude to her 
excellences of character in the following passage : — 

" By the way, madam, you may see how I differ from 
the majority of those cynics who would not admit your 
sex into the community of a noble friendship. I believe 
some wives have been the best friends in the world. . . 
I cannot say that women are capable of ail those 
excellencies by which men can oblige the world, and 
therefore a female friend, in some cases, is not so good a 
counsellor as a wise man, and cannot so well defend my 
honour, nor dispose of relief and assistances, if she be 
under the power of another ; but a woman can love as 
passionately, and converse as pleasantly, and retain a 



KATHARINE PHILIPS. 213 

secret as faithfully, and be useful in her proper ministries, 
and she can die for her friend as well as the bravest 
Roman knight. A man is the best friend in trouble, but 
a woman may be equal to him in the days of joy : a 
woman can as well increase our comforts, but cannot so 
well lessen our sorrows, and therefore we do not carry 
women with us when we go to fight ; but in peaceful 
cities and times, women are the beauties of society and 
the prettinesses of friendship ; and when we consider 
that few persons in the world have all those excellencies 
by which friendship can be useful and illustrious, we may 
as well allow women as men to be friends : since they 
have all that can be necessary and essential to friend- 
ship, and those cannot have all by which friendship can 
be accidentally improved." 

To this compliment to the sex, the sex apparently is 
indebted to the impression produced upon the Bishop by 
the virtues and fine qualities and graceful accomplish- 
ments of " the most ingenuous and excellent Mrs. 
Katharine Philips." 

A folio edition of " Poems by the most deservedly 
admired Mrs. Catharine Philips, the matchless Orinda. 
To which are added M. Corneille's Pompey and Horace, 
Tragedies, with several other Translations from the 
French \ and her Picture before them, engraved by 
Fairthorne," was published in 1667; and, in 1705, ap- 
peared a small volume of her Letters to Sir Charles 
Cotterel, under the title of "Letters from Orinda to 
Poliarchus." 



214 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

L^ETITIA Pilkington. 

Another of those accomplished ladies who " lisped in 
numbers,'' and practised in womanhood the accom- 
plishments they acquired in girlhood, was Mrs. Lsetitia 
Pilkington. Her father, Dr. Van Lewen, was of Dutch 
extraction, but had settled in Dublin, where his daughter 
Laetitia was born in 1712. 

Her taste for letters was manifested at a very early 
age ; but, on account of a weakness in the eyes, she was 
forbidden to read. The prohibition had the natural 
effect of stimulating her curiosity. " Twenty times in a 
day," she says, " have I been corrected for asking what 
such and such letters spelt : my mother used to tell me 
the word, accompanied with a good box on the ear, which, 
I suppose, imprinted it on my mind." So great was her 
desire to read, that she seized every opportunity of study- 
ing letters in private, and by the time she was five years 
old, had acquired a very considerable facility, as the 
following anecdote will show : — 

" My mother being abroad, I had happily laid hold on 
[Dryden's] Alexander's Feast, and found something so 
charming in it that I read it aloud. But how like a 
condemned criminal did I look, when my father, opening 
his study door, took me in the very fact : I dropped my 
book, and burst into tears, begging pardon, and promising 
never to do so again : but my sorrow was soon dispelled 
when he bade me not be frightened, but read to him ; 
which, to his great surprise, 1 did distinctly, and without 



ELIZABETH ROWE. 215 

hurting the beauty of the numbers. Instead of the 
whipping, of which I stood in dread, he took me up in 
his arms and kissed me, giving me a whole shilling as a 
reward, and told me he would give me another as soon 
as I had got a poem by heart, which he put into my 
hand, and proved to be Mr. Pope's Sacred Eclogue \The 
Messiah] ; which task I performed before my mother 
returned home. They were both astonished at my 
memory, and from that day forward I was permitted to 
read as much as I pleased. Only my father furnished 
me with the best and politest authors, and took delight 
in explaining to me whatever, by reason of my tender 
years, was above my capacity of understanding." 

From a value of the thoughts of others, she naturally 
ripened into an exponent of her own ; and her composi- 
tions in prose and verse commended her to the favourable 
notice of Dean Swift. In later life she wrote a couple of 
dramas, and she was the author of many miscellaneous 
pieces in verse and prose ; but posterity recognises as of 
interest and value only the anecdotes she has recorded 
of the famous Dean. 

Elizabeth Rowe. 

Reference may also be made to a lady of whom the 
present generation, it is to be feared, is wholly ignorant, 
though she was distinguished with the friendship of 
Bishop Ken, the poet Prior, and Dr. Watts. Elizabeth 
Rowe was the eldest daughter of Mr. Walter Singer, 
'* a gentleman of good family, at Ilchester, in Somerset- 



216 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

shire, and a dissenting minister. She was born in 
1674. At a very early age she was deprived of her 
mother by death, and her father then removed into the 
neighbourhood of Frome, where he had a small estate. 
The pious and exemplary life of this good Christian 
gentleman had a happy effect on the youthful mind of 
his daughter, who from her childhood was religiously 
inclined. In her " Devout Exercises of the Heart," 
published by Dr. Watts, she says, " I humbly hope 
I have a rightful claim : Thou art my God, and the 
God of my religious ancestors, the God of my mother, 
the God of my pious father : dying and breathing out 
his soul, he gave me to Thy care ; he put me in Thy 
gracious arms, and delivered me up to Thy protection ; 
he told me Thou wouldst never leave nor forsake 
me; he triumphed in Thy long-experienced faithfulness 
and truth, and gave his testimony for Thee with his 
latest breath." 

In her early girlhood, Elizabeth displayed a marked 
inclination for the sister arts of poetry and painting ; 
and in the cultivation of these lies a definite and con- 
siderable gain, even where the artistic genius is wanting, 
because they exercise a refining and elevating influence. 
The old Latin adage, with which Ovid mercifully 
furnished the writers of moral essays and common- 
places, — 

" Emollit mores, 
Nee sinit esse feros " 

is as true as it is hackneyed, and is hackneyed, of course, 



ELIZABETH ROWE. 217 

because it is true. Then study, however lightly under- 
taken, must necessarily have a purifying effect upon the 
taste, must stimulate the fancy, and fill the mind with 
images and ideas of grace and beauty. 

Elizabeth begun to write verses at twelve years of age, 
and loved the pencil, " when she had scarcely strength 
and steadiness of hand sufficient to guide it." Her 
biographer would have us believe that in her early years 
she squeezed out the juice of herbs to serve her instead 
of colours. Her father, perceiving her love of drawing, 
wisely engaged a master to instruct her in the art ; and 
the practice of it continued to be a favourite amuse- 
ment until her death. 

Her chief bias, however, was for poetical composition ; 
and this was the delight and favourite occupation of 
her girlhood. It so completely dominated over her, 
that her prose (it is averred) had " all the charms of 
verse, without its fetters, — the same fire and elevation, 
the same bright images, bold figures, and rich and 
flowing diction." Even her ordinary and familiar letters 
bore the impress of a glowing poetical fancy. Thus 
happily and gracefully employed with the pen and the 
pencil for the alternate companion of her leisure, she 
passed through girlhood into womanhood. Her poetical 
abilities introduced her to the notice of Lord Weymouth's 
family at Longleat ; and it was there, I suppose, she made 
the acquaintance of Bishop Ken, at whose request she 
wrote a " Paraphrase of the thirty-eighth chapter of Job," 
which is undeniably graceful. One of Lord Weymouth's 



2i8 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

sons, the Honourable Mr. Thynne, undertook to teach 
her French and Italian ; and in both languages her pro- 
gress was very rapid. 

It would be venturing beyond the prescribed scope 
of these pages to trace the useful and unsullied career 
of this accomplished woman ; but, as a point of literary 
interest, I may refer to her acquaintance with the poet 
Prior, who is believed to have ranked among her nume- 
rous suitors. In the collection of his poems will be 
found, " Love and Friendship, a Pastoral, by Mrs. 
Elizabeth Singer," followed by Prior's eulogistic lines 
" To the Author of the Foregoing Pastoral ; " and his 
stanzas " To a lady [the same], she refusing to continue 
a dispute with me, and leaving me in the argument." 
In the latter, his expressions savour more of " love " 
than of u friendship ; " as when he says : — 

" In the dispute, whate'er I said, 

My heart was by my tongue belied ; 
And in my books you might have read 
How much I argued on your side." 

The fair poetess had numerous other admirers, from 
whom, in 1710, she selected Mr. Thomas Rowe, a 
promising scholar, who was twelve years her junior, 
and survived his marriage only five years. 

Among Mrs. Rowe's works will be found an " Elegy 
on the Death of her Husband ; " the once well-known 
"History of Joseph;" "Friendship in Death;" "Letters, 
Moral and Entertaining ; " " Devout Exercises of the 
Heart ; " and numerous hymns and miscellaneous 



ELIZABETH ROWE. 219 

poems. The pastoral already mentioned I shall here 
transcribe : — 

Amaryllis. While from the skies the ruddy sun descends, 
And rising night the ev'ning shade extends ; 
While pearly dews o'erspread the fruitful field, 
And closing flowers reviving odours yield ; 
Let us, beneath these spreading trees, recite 
What from our hearts our Muses may indite. 
Nor need we, in this close retirement, fear 
Lest any swain our amorous secrets hear. 

Silvia. To every shepherd I would mine proclaim, 
Since fair Aminta is my softest theme ; 
A stranger to the loose delights of Love, 
My thoughts the nobler warmth of Friendship prove : 
And while its pure and sacred fire I sing, 
Chaste goddess of the groves, thy succour bring. 

Amaryllis. Propitious God of Love, my breast inspire 
With all thy charms, with all thy pleasing fire : 
Propitious God of Love, thy succour bring, 
Whilst I, thy darling, thy Alexis, sing — 
Alexis, as the opening blossoms fair, 
Lovely as light, and soft as yielding air. 
For him each virgin sighs ; and on the plains 
The happy youth above each rival reigns. 
Nor to the echoing groves and whisp'ring spring, 
In sweeter strains does artful Conon sing, 
When loud applauses fill the crowded groves, 
And Phoebus the superior song approve-*, 

Silvia. Beauteous Aminta is as early light 
Breaking the melancholy shades of night. 
When she is near, all anxious trouble flies, 
And our reviving hearts confess her eyes. 
Young love, and blooming joy, and gay desires 
In every breast the beauteous nymph inspires : 
And on the plain, when she no more appears, 
The plain a dark and gloomy prospect wears ; 



220 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

In vain the streams roll on ; the eastern breeze 
Dances in vain among the trembling trees ; 
In vain the birds begin their evening song, 
And to the silent night their notes prolong ; 
Nor groves, nor crystal streams, nor verdant field 
Does wonted pleasure in her absence yield. 

Amaryllis. And in his absence, all the pensive day, 
In some obscure retreat I lonely stray ; 
All day to the repeating caves complain 
In mournful accents and a dying strain. 
Dear, lovely youth, I cry to all around ; 
Dear, lovely youth, the flattering vales resound. 

Silvia. On flowery banks, by every murm'ring stream, 
Aminta is my Muse's softest theme : 
'Tis she that does my artful notes refine ; 
With fair Aminta's name my noblest verse shall shine. 

Ama?yllis. I'll twine fresh garlands for Alexis' brows, 
And consecrate to him eternal vows : 
The charming youth shall my Apollo prove ; 
He shall adorn my songs, and tune my voice to love. 

No one would pretend that these smoothly-wrought 
couplets contain a spark of the fire and light of true 
poetry, of its passion or its pathos ; but it must be 
confessed that they have a wonderful grace and ease 
of movement, and are not unworthy of Prior himself, 
or of Pope in his earlier moods. 



CHAPTER V. 

SAINTLY LIVES: TWO ENTHUSIASTS. 

catharine of siena; jeanne d'arc. 

Catharine of Siena. 

IT would not be easy to find a more remarkable 
instance of the natural development of the girl into 
the woman than is afforded by the life of Catharine of 
Siena. Nor would it be easy to find an instance from 
which a more valuable lesson or a more potent warning 
can be derived. In her saintly girlhood there was so 
much that it would be well to imitate ; in its excessive 
self-mortification and unregulated enthusiasm, there was 
so much that it is needful to avoid. 

The ancient city of Siena, now overtaken by decay and 
humiliation, but, in the fourteenth century, the capital 
of a commonwealth which claimed equality with Florence, 
is situated in a fair and fertile district of Tuscany, between 
the wooded spurs of the Apennines and the blue waters 
of the Mediterranean. All around it lie picturesque 
sylvan valleys, divided by castle-covered ridges, and 
converging towards the hill where rears aloft the walls 



222 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



and towers of Siena. Another but a lower summit is 
consecrated by the stately Church of St. Dominic. The 
hollow between these two summits, the Contrada d'Oca, 
was formerly inhabited by the poorer class of the Stenese 
population ; and there to this day the traveller may see 
the modest birthplace of one of the most celebrated of 
the daughters of Siena, Catharine iienincasa, commonly 
known as St. Catharine. Not far away stands the chapel 
erected to her memory, with the simple inscription over 
its portal of " Sposae Christi Katharinae Domus." The 
neighbourhood is pleasant enough, for a stream sparkles 
in the shade, and the green slopes are heavy with olive 
groves. 

Says her biographer, Raymond : " Catharine of Siena 
was in the fourteenth century what St. Bernard was to 
the twelfth, that is, the light and support of the Church. 
At the moment when the bark of St. Peter was the 
most violently tossed and strained by the tempest, God 
gave it for pilot a poor young girl who was lying hidden 
in a dyer's little shop. She travelled to France to lead 
the Pontiff, Gregory XL, away from the pleasures of his 
native land ; she brought back the Pope to Rome, the 
real centre of Christianity. She addressed herself to 
cardinals, princes, kings. Her zeal, kindling at the sight 
of the disorders which ran riot in the Church, led her to 
exert all her energies to overcome them : she negotiated 
between the nations and the Holy See ; she brought 
back to God a multitude of souls, and, by her teaching 
and example, infused a new vitality into those great 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 



223 



religious brotherhoods which were the life and pulse of 
the Church." 

Catharine Benincasa was the survivor of a pair of 
twins born to Giacomo Benincasa by his wife Lapa, 
in 1347. She was happy in her parents ; for her mother 
was an amiable and religious-minded woman ; while her 
father was remarkable for the purity and nobility of his 
character. His wife's estimate of him may be quoted : 
" He is so mild and moderate in his words, that he 
never gives way to anger, though it would have been jus- 
tifiable on many occasions. If he saw any of his house- 
hold vexed or excited, he would soothe them by the 
admonition, ' Now, now, do not say anything which 
is unjust or unkind, and God will give you His blessing.' 
On one occasion he was much injured by a fellow- 
citizen, who had robbed him of money, and made use 
of falsehood and calumny in order to ruin his character 
and his business. He never would hear his enemy 
harshly spoken of; and when I, thinking there was no 
harm in it, would express my anger against my husband's 
calumniator, he would say, ' Let him alone, dear, let 
him alone, and God will bless you. God will show him 
his error, and will be our defence.' This soon came 
true, for our adversary confessed that he was in the 
wrong." 

At an early age Catharine was distinguished by he! 
many gifts and graces. Her neighbours took so much 
delight in her sweet childish prattle that they christened 
her Euphrosyne, or joy, delight, satisfaction. The 



224 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

sweetness of her smile, of which her eyes as well as her 
lips partook, was irresistible. The frank and genial nature 
found affinities in all things pure, tender, and beautiful ; 
and she loved birds and trees and flowers, as well as 
her fellow-creatures. From the first she was prone to a 
certain excitability and exaltation of soul, which led 
her to dream dreams and see visions. Her favourite 
place of retirement was a small chapel contiguous to the 
convent-church of St. Dominic ; and here, in her hours 
of solitary communion, she had glimpses of great mys 
teries. One evening, when she was six years old, her 
mother sent her, with her little brother Stephen, to 
carry a message to the house of an elder sister. The 
sun was sinking as they returned, and to the imaginative 
Catharine the richly-coloured west, as it shone above the 
gable-end of St. Dominic's Church, revealed the person 
of the Saviour, gloriously clad, and invested with divine 
majesty and beauty. As she gazed, Jesus cast a look of 
tenderness upon her, and stretched forth His hand in 
the act of benediction. While she stood absorbed in 
silent ecstasy, her little brother descended the hill, 
supposing that she was close behind. Turning round, 
he saw that she still lingered on the summit, with eyes 
riveted on the gold and purple splendours of the sunset. 
He called, but she answered not. Running back to 
her, he seized her hand : " Come on," he said, " why 
wait you here ? " With a start, as if suddenly aroused 
from a trance, she exclaimed, sobbing, "Oh, Stephen, 
could you but have seen what T saw, you would never 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 225 



have disturbed me thus." But the vision had vanished, 
and, with a tearful face, she directed her steps homeward. 
Her mind being filled with stories of the saints 
and hermits, and of their doings and sufferings, and 
their life-long seclusion from the world in remote wilder- 
nesses, the idea occurred to her, when she was about 
seven years old, that she would go on a pilgrimage into 
the desert. With this view she would often betake 
herself to secluded nooks, and muse and dream away 
the hours, thinking upon subjects that to children of 
her age are generally unintelligible or repellent. But as 
her privacy was always interrupted, she concluded that, 
to obtain the silence and solitude her soul longed for, 
she must really seek out the desert. One morning she 
took her departure. It was natural to suppose that the 
ravens would provide her with food, as they provided the 
prophet Elijah ; but she prudently carried with her a 
loaf of bread to supply her wants if the ravens failed ; — 
as fail they did, for the old miracles are not repeated in 
this world of unfaith and hard-heartedness. Leaving 
the city behind her, she boldly pressed forward to a 
range of hills, which, as the houses were few and scat- 
tered, she conjectured to be the border of the wilderness. 
Creeping into a little rocky hollow, she began to pray 
and meditate in happy mood, and passed the day exul- 
tant in her tender, holy fancies, until, at eventide, God 
suddenly revealed to her that He designed her for 
another mode of life, and that she must not quit her 
father's house. She immediately departed homeward ; 



226 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

tradition asserting that she was carried by angels, or 
miraculously supported so that her feet did not touch 
the ground. 

We read of her next as forming a congregation of 
children of her own age, and entertaining them with 
extemporaneous sermons, which are described as having 
been eloquent and powerful. She was only twelve years 
old when her parents began to speak to her of marriage, 
though no one among their acquaintances seemed to 
them worthy of being mated with so sweet and holy 
a life. As for Catharine, she had already resolved upon 
celibacy, in order that she might be more at liberty to 
do God's service. At last a young man of good family 
and high character made his appearance as her suitor, 
and was warmly encouraged by her parents, who, finding 
her resolute in refusing to listen to him, subjected her to 
a severe discipline. Having been denied a chamber for 
her private use, she elected to share that of her little 
brother Stephen, because during the hours of his long 
absence in the day, and of his deep, unbroken sleep at 
night, she could continue without interruption her 
prayers and devout meditations. Her calm, undemon- 
strative resolution greatly impressed her parents ; they 
could not but see that she was inspired by some exalted 
aim and motive, and not swayed by any passing 
capriciousness ; and what it was her father discovered 
one evening, when, suddenly entering her room, he found 
her engaged in prayer ; and felt the full force of the 
enthusiasm expressed by her attitude and countenance. 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 227 



An excitable temperament, a vivid fancy, a tender, 
sympathetic nature, and a habit of long meditation and 
fervent prayer, — we might reasonably expect that the 
result of these would be the rapid growth of dreams and 
illusions. Her eagerness to assume the garb and enter 
the order of the Dominicans was the immediate cause 
of a vision of St. Dominic, who, as he smiled upon her, 
said, " Daughter, be of good cheer ; fear no let or 
hindrance ; for the day cometh in the which you shall 
be clothed with the mantle you so eagerly covet." In- 
spired with a new spirit by this personal relation (as she 
conceived it to be), she assembled the various members 
of her family, and spoke to them out of the heart's 
fulness : — 

"For a long time you have decided that I should 
marry, but my conduct must have shown you that I 
could not accept the decision. Yet have I held back 
from explaining n^self out of the reverence I feel 
towards you, my parents. Now, however, my duty 
compels me to break silence. I must speak frankly, 
and make known the resolution I have adopted, — a 
resolution not of yesterday, but dating from my early 
years. Know, then, that I have made a vow, not lightly 
but deliberately, and with full knowledge of what I was 
doing. Now that I am of maturer age, and have a better 
knowledge of the purport of my own actions, I persist, 
by the grace of God, in my resolve ; and it would be 
easier to melt a rock than to make me change my mind. 
Abandon, therefore, my dear parents, all these schemes 



22S CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



for an earthly alliance : on this point I cannot satisfy 
you, because I must obey God rather than man. If 
you wish me to remain a servant in your house, I will 
cheerfully fulfil all your wishes to the best of my power ; 
but should you be so angered with me, that you should 
desire me to leave you, know that I shall still inflexibly 
adhere to my resolve. He who has united my soul to 
His, holds all the treasures of earth and heaven, and 
He can provide for and defend me." 

Those she addressed could not listen to her frank and 
earnest words, with their assertion of self-dedication to 
God's service, unmoved. They broke into sobs and 
tears of loving admiration ; they withdrew all opposition 
which had suddenly become criminal and sacrilegious 
in their eyes. " God preserve us, dearest child," ex- 
claimed her father, " from any longer opposing the 
resolution which He has inspired. We are satisfied 
that you have been actuated by no idle fancy, but by 
a movement of divine grace. Fulfil without hindrance 
the vows you have taken ; do all that the Holy Spirit 
commands : henceforth your time shall be at your own 
disposal ; only pray for us, that we may become worthy 
of Him who has called you at so tender an age." 
Turning to his wife and children he added, "Let no 
one hereafter contradict my dear child, or seek to turn 
her from her holy resolution ; let her serve her Saviour 
in the way she desires, and may she seek His favour 
and pardoning mercy for us ! We could never find for 
her a more beautiful or honourable alliance, for her soul 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 229 

is wedded to the Lord ; and it is not a mortal bridegroom, 

but the Lord who dieth not, we now receive into our 

house." 

Her little room she was thenceforward allowed to use 

as a cell or oratory ; it became her favourite resort and 

the scene of those ecstatic communions in the spirit, 

which, to her excited imagination, resolved themselves 

into celestial visions. For three years she seems to have 

devoted her whole time to prayer and meditation ; not 

altogether commendable from the true Christian point 

of view, as work in Christ's name and for Christ's people 

is often the highest form of prayer, and the primal duties 

are those which lie nearest to us. She taught herself 

during this period of seclusion the most rigid lessons 

of abstemiousness and mortification. Her diet was of 

the plainest, and barely sufficient to support life; she 

gave but little time to sleep ; she lay upon the bare 

boards without any covering; her garments were of 

the coarsest texture, though of scrupulous cleanliness, 

for she regarded cleanliness and external neatness as 

the outward and visible signs of the inward grace of 

purity. The night was consumed in prayer, and it was 

not until the matin-bell announced the coming of the 

dawn that she retired to her wooden bed for a brief 

repose. It must be acknowledged that this was a most 

unhealthy and unwholesome mode of living, and one 

essentially erroneous, because it tended to defeat the 

very aim and purpose which she had in view — to unfit 

her for the work she desired to undertake Catharine, 

16 



230 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

in after life, confessed, that to conquer the natural in- 
clination to sleep had cost her more pain and trouble 
than any other of her struggles : and she might have 
added, that of all her victories it was the least useful, 
while, in effect, though she knew it not, it was a direct 
rebellion against the laws of God. " Such conquests 
over self and over the infirmities," says Mrs. Butler, 
11 were over many of the just and natural demands of 
the body, and have never been absent in the lives of 
those whom, par excellence, we call ' the saints,' — those 
who have left behind them an influence which is of God, 
and imperishable ; an influence which even the most 
sceptical must confess to have been benign, and charged 
with blessing for humanity. 

" Catharine's health was delicate, yet she possessed an 
extraordinary nervous energy, and even a muscular 
strength which astonished those who saw her exert it 
in the performance of any generous or helpful act. She 
suffered all her life from a weakness of the stomach, 
which made it difficult for her to take any food without 
pain ; succeeded often by violent sickness and vomiting. 
She was also subject to attacks of faintness and prostra- 
tion, especially in the spring, which would last for 
several weeks." 

But it is just this excess of self-mortification, this 
unwise and unjust chastisement of the unoffending body, 
which explains the hallucinations and visions of holy 
enthusiasts like St. Catharine. Where a constant viola- 
tion of the natural laws has wrought up the nervous 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 



system to an extreme tension, an uncontrollable stimulus 
is applied to the imagination. In the hushed solitude 
of the recluse's cell, the brain, already jaded by intense 
efforts of self communion, is overpowered by the dis- 
ordered nervous system, and reduced to a condition in 
which it responds to every passing fancy, and gives 
shape and form to every wayward idea. Then, to the 
enthusiast's mind's eye the air teems with angel hosts 
and is musical with seraph voices, while all around floats 
and flashes the splendour of the Divine Presence. But 
a state of such high and prolonged excitement is fatally 
injurious to the sufferer, whom it wrecks completely ; 
the chord, too tightly drawn, snaps, and the imperfect 
life is at an end. 

And thus it happened that Catharine of Siena died 
at thirty-three, before she had accomplished half the 
span which the Psalmist allots to humanity. A more 
wisely controlled girlhood had brought about a stronger 
and healthier womanhood ; and had she not exhausted 
her physical and mental energies in youth, she might 
have lived to do good work in a healthy and happy 
old age. 

To the Order of St. Dominic belonged a lay society of 
brethren, who undertook to sacrifice at need their lives 
and earthly goods to the cause of Christ's Cross ; their 
wives were pledged to offer no discouragement or hindrance 
to their husbands in the fulfilment of their obligations. 
The associates were known as Brethren and Sisters of 
the Militia of Jesus Christ; they wore the well-known and 



232 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

highly-honoured black and white habit of St. Dominic. 
Catharine felt impelled to become a preacher, and 
longed to carry the lamp of the Gospel into the dark 
places she visited. As a preliminary, the Church required 
that she should be enrolled as a Mantellata, which is 
the name given to a wearer of the cloak or mantle of 
St. Dominic. Her mother made application to the 
Association to accept Catharine as a member ; but was 
informed that it was contrary to custom to receive 
young maidens, and that the mantle had hitherto been 
restricted to widows of mature age or to wives conse- 
crated to work with their husbands. It was added that 
for the Mantellata no cloister or separate building 
was reserved, but each was at liberty to live and work 
at home. The application was urged again upon the 
Sisters, who at length agreed to admit her, if she were 
not too handsome ; for they were bound, they said, not 
to give occasion to malicious rumour or idle calumny. 
The objection put forward did not apply, however, to 
Catharine, whose face, attractive from its expression of 
candour, gentleness, and meditation, was attractive, but 
certainly not handsome. It was lighted up with the 
sunshine of a cheerful and tender heart : the forehead 
was broad and smooth, but too receding ; the chin and 
jaw were firmly defined and rather prominent ; the hair 
and eye-brows of a dark-brown ; the eyes, a clear grey 
or hazel. The smile had a wonderful charm in it ; a 
natural ease and elegance marked all her movements. 
Her address was fascination itself, because, perhaps, she 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 233 

always followed out her own natural impulses, and 
disregarded the rigid conventionalities of the time. 

"Young men, who would come with some feeling of 
awe to visit the far-famed saint, and not without fears 
concerning the interview, were taken by surprise, 
gladdened, and re-assured by her frank approach, her 
two hands held out for greeting, her kind, sisterly smile, 
and the easy grace with which she invited them to open 
their hearts." Notwithstanding the influence she ac- 
quired, her extended reputation, and the deference 
shown her by the most illustrious personages of the 
age, she to the last retained the simple and unassuming 
demeanour of a " Daughter of the People." And the 
people lavished on her their most affectionate applause, 
while their enduring gratitude is shown to this day by 
the loving epithets which they applied to her name. 
She is called "The Child of the People," "The 
Daughter of the Republic," " The Beloved Sienese," 
" Our Lady of the Contrada d'Oca," " The Mantellata," 
''The People's Catharine," and the " Beata Popolana." 

Catharine did not launch into a public life the 
moment she had been received as a Mantellata. She 
had first to undergo a strenuous spiritual trial. "The 
great enemy of man advanced to the dread assault of 
her soul ; " and, like our own Bunyan, she passed 
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The 
most humiliating temptations assailed her ; c he saw in 
her dreams the most impure orgies, in whicn tnc words 
and gestures of lewd men and women invited her to 



234 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



join. She endured the painfullest conflicts imaginable, 
the result partly of physical reaction, and partly of 
mental excitement ; but she bore the burden heroically, 
praying with the more earnestness and working with 
the greater assiduity. And, God be praised ! there are 
few attacks of the Devil which may not be resisted, 
and beaten back by work and prayer ! These two 
talismans won for Catharine a happy victory. But 
when once this temptation was over, she had to strive 
against another of a subtler nature, — one which did not 
repel by its loathsomeness, but attracted by its natural 
sweetness. She was young; her veins glowed with the 
warm Italian blood ; her heart throbbed with passionate 
emotions; and she yearned for the pure delights of 
human life. Her thoughts by day and her dreams by 
night turned upon happy wedlock and happy mother- 
hood. The amorous strains of the Troubadours seemed 
to wreathe their melodies into the organ music of the 
Church. A voice said to her : " Why so rashly choose 
a life in which thou wilt be unable to persevere ? Why 
resist those holy impulses of Nature which come from 
God? It is possible to become a wife and a mother, 
and yet to serve God. Many among the saints were 
married. Think of Sarah and Rachel of old ; of many 
of later years ; think of St. Bridget, Queen of Sweden, 
who was wife, mother, and prophet." 

But Catharine had made Her vow, and would not 
break it. She had resolved to dedicate herself wholly 
and absolutely to heaven, and to that resolution she 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 235 

adhered. It was well that she did so; she had her 
special work to do, which, as wife and mother, with 
other duties, other claims, and other responsibilities, 
she could never have done. For most women the post 
of duty is to be found in the domestic life. They can 
best serve God by bringing high and holy influences to 
bear upon their household circle : — 

' ' Then through the sweet and toilsome day 
To labour is to pray ; 
Then love, with kindly, beaming eyes, 
Prepares the sacrifice, 
And voice and innocent smile 
Of childhood do our cheerful liturgies beguile." 

But it is not so with other women ; they are called, 
like Miriam and Deborah, to an exceptional task. Their 
rare intellectual powers and wide sympathies would decay 
and die down if restricted to any narrow sphere ; or 
their capacities of emnusiasm and devout energy would 
rust if not expended upon an adequately large number 
of objects. And there was this advantage in the part she 
chose : it pointed out a mission and a way of usefulness 
to unmarried women ; it taught them how to utilize their 
lives for their own weal and the benefit of the sick, the 
sorrowing, and the oppressed. 

A beautiful period of calm and repose came to 
Catharine after this second conflict. Then followed a 
third, and the worst temptation. She had been assailed 
through the passions and the affections, and had defeated 
each assault ; the third was the subtlest, for it sought to 



236 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

find an ally in her intellectual pride. " She was beset by 
the demon of Doubt, which haunted her mind with 
sceptical arguments and cynical suggestions. And in 
this last combat she lost the support of the Divine 
Helper who had hitherto sustained her. Her faith was 
in danger, and Christ the Consoler seemed to recede 
further and further from her side. The darkness of night 
closed around her ; there was no radiance of hope to 
cheer her spirit and guide her hesitating steps. Oh, 
how great the agony when the foundations on which we 
have built seem suddenly to crumble away beneath our 
feet ! when the Heaven to which our prayers have been 
sent up seems to vanish into a bewildering mist ! when 
even the Cross on which we have leaned snaps like a 
reed, and we fall prostrate in a great dread ! Then, 
indeed, if we yield, if for one moment we cease to wrestle, 
we are lost ! But Catharine summoned all her energies ; 
when prayer was the most distasteful, she prayed most 
earnestly ; when divine things were most unreal, she 
clung to them most fervently. When the darkness was 
deepest, she searched most eagerly for light. When 
doubts were most constant, she sought most determinedly 
to renew and revive her belief." She threw herself at the 
feet of her God and Father, and besought Him not to 
leave her. Repairing to the church on the hill, she 
spent the greater part of three days in impassioned 
prayer, — such prayer as seems almost to be wrung out of 
the soul with tears of blood. The Evil One still darkened 
even here, and a cold, cynical voice seemed to say, "Poor, 



CATHARINE OF SlEJSiA. 237 

wretched creature, thou canst never pass thy life in such 
wretchedness as this ! Behold, we will torment thee to 
death unless thou dost promise to obey us." Catharine 
communed in her heart : " Be it so ; I have chosen 
sorrow and suffering for the sake of Christ, and I am 
willing, if need be, to endure until death." And there- 
upon a burst of radiance from above filled and flooded 
the church with glory. The devils fled, and One brighter 
than the angels came and soothed her, and spoke to her 
of her trial and victory. " Lord," she exclaimed, "where 
wast Thou when my heart was so tormented? " " I was 
even in its midst, My child." " Oh, Lord," she replied, 
" Thou art everlasting Truth, and humbly do I bow 
before Thy word ; but how can I believe that Thou wert 
in my heart when it ached with wicked and rebellious 
thoughts ? " " Did these thoughts," said the Lord, "give 
thee pleasure or pain?" " Oh, a supreme pain, an 
inexpressible agony ! " Then spake the Lord, " Thou 
didst feel this pain and agony because I Myself was 
hidden in thy soul. It was My presence which rendered 
those evil thoughts unendurable ; thou madest an effort 
to repel them, because they filled thee with horror ; and 
when thou didst not succeed, thy remorse almost over- 
whelmed thee. When the period to which I had limited 
the struggle had elapsed, I sent forth the beams of My 
light, and the shades of hell vanished, because they 
cannot resist that light. Because thou hast accepted 
these trials with thy whole heart, thou art now delivered 
from them for ever : it is not thy sufferings that have 



238 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

given Me pleasure, but the will that has borne them with 
so much patience." 

It was soon after this strange illusion that Catharine's 
soul was caught up to that marvellous ecstasy which so 
many of the Italian painters have represented ; as, for 
instance, Fra Bartolommeo and Correggio, in their 
pictures of the " Marriage of St. Catharine," — pictures in 
which the Virgin Mary is shown as guiding the hand of 
the Child Jesus to place a ring on Catharine's finger in 
token of her divine espousals. The dream or vision, for 
such Catharine described it to have been, was the evident 
result upon an excitable imagination of prolonged mental 
strain. She thought that the Saviour approached her, 
and put upon her finger a golden ring, blazing with a 
diamond of indescribable splendour. And He said to 
her, " I, Thy Creator and Redeemer, espouse thee in 
faith and love. Keep thou this token in purity, until, in 
the presence of the Father, we celebrate the Lamb's 
eternal nuptials. Henceforth, daughter, be thou brave 
and true ; perform with a courageous spirit the works 
My providence shall assign to thee ; and thou shalt 
prevail over all enemies." 

A passing reference may be made to that intercom- 
munion, that spiritual fellowship, between Catharine's 
soul and God of which the hagiologists make so much, 
relying upon the phrases she frequently employs in her 
letters, such as " My God told me to do this," and ''The 
Lord said to me." I think that it is needless to put a 
literal interpretation upon this language ; nor for myself 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 239 

would I attempt any explanation of it, believing that each 
individual soul, in its intercourse with God, has its own 
methods and its own limits. To some, the celestial voices 
sound with a glorious distinctness ; upon others they fall 
only like dim, vague echoes, the accents and cadences of 
a far-off music. Some of us draw so much nearer the 
heavenly gates than others, and see with so much clearer 
and more powerful a vision. Their separation from the 
world is so complete, and they have so utterly devoted 
all their thoughts and feelings to the realisation of spiri- 
tual gifts and things, that they seem able to enter upon 
a close and an intimate converse with their God and 
Father. Who then shall decide to what extent God 
reveals Himself to these happier souls, how far they are 
uplifted in their ecstatic sympathy, or whether the imagi- 
nation sometimes deludes the spirit ? 

" I will not attempt," writes Mrs. Butler, " any explana- 
tion or apology for the manner in which our saint 
constantly speaks of that which the natural eye hath not 
seen, nor the ear heard, but which God has in all 
times revealed to them that persistently seek Him. 
Those who have any experience of real prayer know 
full well that in the pauses of the soul before God, after 
it has uttered its complaint, made known its desires, or 
sought guidance in perplexity, there comes the clearer 
vision of duty, and the still, small voice of guidance is 
heard, rectifying the judgment, strengthening the resolve, 
and consoling the spirit : they know that this influence, 
external to us, and yet within us, gently and forcibly 



2 4 o CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

moves us, deals with us, speaks with us, in fine. Prayer 
ctnnot truly be called communion, if the only voice 
heard be the voice of the pleader. Be still, be silent, 
then, dear reader, if you are disposed to object. If yon 
have not yet heard that voice of God speaking within 
you, it is because you have not yet pleaded enough with 
Him ; it is because you have not yet persevered long 
enough in the difficult path of divine research." 

It was at this time that Catharine taught herself to 
read, in order that she might study the Scriptures and 
the lives and writings of holy men. As she brought to 
the task a spirit of devout enthusiasm, she made so swift 
a progress that it suggested to her friends the idea of 
supernatural intervention. Some years later she learned 
to write ; and the force and strength of her natural 
powers are proved by the admirable beauty of her style, 
which has been likened to that of Dante. 

Here the story of her girlhood terminates;* but I 
subjoin in a note a brief summary of her later career, 
that the reader may see how naturally it flowed out of 
the earlier, and how entirely the girl's enthusiasm was 
taken up and expounded and intensified by the woman. 
The enthusiasm of youth is often the folly of age ; but 
it was not so with Catharine, who from first to last 
dedicated herself, and all she was and had, to the 
Saviour's service. 

* The foregoing pages I have adapted and condensed from my 
biography of St. Catharine of Siena, in my " Heroes of the Cross " 
(London, 1880). 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 241 



Note. — In 1365, and at the age of eighteen, Catharine received 
the habit or mantle of the third order of St. Dominic, and entered 
laboriously and assiduously on the work of charity. She might 
constantly be seen in the streets of Siena, bowed beneath the burden 
of the corn, wine, oil, and other provisions, which she was carrying 
to the poor. Her benevolence was as broad and as true as that of 
the good queen, St. Elizabeth of Hungary. An old leprous woman, 
named Tocca, had, by order of the magistrates of the city, been 
turned out of the hospital. Catharine's entreaties and remonstrances 
obtained Tocca's re-admission ; and thenceforth she regularly visited 
Tocca twice a day until her death, when the old woman's body was 
laid out by her own hands. Yet for all this bounty, her only recom- 
pense, in this world, was Tocca's most scurrilous abuse, which she 
endured with Christian patience. She fared no better in another 
case, that of a woman with a cancer in her breast, whose painful 
and repulsive wound she regularly dressed. This woman, aided and 
abetted by a sister of the convent, invented the most injurious 
reports against her benefactress. Lapa, Catharine's mother, angrily 
forbade her daughter to minister any longer to such gross ingrati- 
tude ; but the enthusiast threw herself at her mother's feet, and 
refused to rise until she had given her a reluctant permission to con- 
tinue her loving work. Her gentle virtues at last prevailed over the 
two sinners ; they implored her forgiveness, and retracted their 
calumnious inventions. 

Catharine was endowed with a gift which is more powerful even 
than enthusiasm, or, at all events, invests enthusiasm with an addi- 
tional power, — that of eloquence. She could speak with a force 
and fervour and beauty which moved the hearts of the rebellious 
to penitence, and that of the worldly to aspirations after a higher 
life. Even in a wider sphere she was equally successful, and the 
feuds of families and parties were composed by the magic of her 
persuasive speech, — a magic which came from the heart. It was its 
wonderful sympathetic strain which lent it so wonderful a fascination. 

A powerful citizen of Siena, named Nauni, unhappily celebrated 
for the relentlessness of his animosities, was urged to pay a visit to 
the saint. After many refusals, he consented ; but he declared before 
going that nothing she could say would induce him to forgive his 
enemies. Her arguments and entreaties failing to produce any 



242 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

effect, she threw herself on her knees, and prayed in burning words 
that God would bring the sweet waters of living love from that 
rocky heart. Nauni would fain have left the place, but was held 
there by an unseen force which he could not resist ; his hard nature 
yielded, and on his knees and with tears he promised to obey her. 
" My dear brother," she said, " I spoke to thee and thou wouldst 
not hear me ; I spoke to God, and He did not despise my prayer. 
Do penance, lest tribulation should befall thee." 

In 1374, when Siena groaned beneath the ravages of a terrible 
pestilence, the enthusiasm of Catharine burned brightly. She 
watched without ceasing by the bedsides of the sufferers, and 
consoled them in their agonies by her prayers and exhortations. 
The fame of her benevolence spread abroad ; and such is the power 
of goodness, that thousands flocked from remote parts of Italy to 
see and hear her. So great was the work she accomplished, that 
Raymond of Capua and another priest were specially appointed 
by the Pope to hear the confessions of her converts. They were 
often thus engaged for twenty-four hours, it is said, without finding 
time to break their fast ; and it was only Catharine's example that 
enabled them to sustain such a display of patient energy. 

In the following year she visited Pisa, at the earnest request of 
its citizens ; and the usual result followed upon her fervid and 
eloquent addresses. When the great league of the Italian States 
was formed against the Holy See, under the leadership of Florence, 
it was through the brilliant services of Catharine that Lucca, Orizzo, 
and Siena were retained in their allegiance. In the cause of peace 
she proceeded to Avignon, where Gregory XL and his cardinals 
received her with marked distinction. She endeavoured to effect a 
reconciliation between Pope Gregory and the Italians ; and succeeded 
in inducing him to abandon Avignon and renew the papal throne 
in the old papal city. 

" Virtues so eminent, joined to an influence seldom exercised by 
and distinctions rarely bestowed on a woman, were of a nature to 
create envy. Whilst Catharine was at Avignon, three prelates one 
day asked the Pope what was his opinion of this young girl : he 
answered briefly, that she was a person of great prudence and rare 
sanctity. They wished to know whether they might visit her ; he 
consented, assuring them they would not be disappointed. They 



CATHARINE OF SIENA. 243 



went forthwith ; said they were sent by the Pope, and asked if it 
were reaiiy true that the republic of Florence had entrusted her with 
so great a negotiation. Without waiting for an answer, the prelates 
reprimanded her for her temerity in presuming to accept an office of 
this importance. A witness of the interview assures us that their 
words were sharp, and that their tone was bitter and scornful : 
Catharine, on the contrary, was calm, modest, and respectful. 
From political, the conversation took a theological turn ; the prelates 
pressed the young nun with difficult questions, in the hope of finding 
her at fault ; but her answers proved a spirit so enlightened and a 
doctrine so pure, that they were compelled to confess themselves 
conquered. A similar triumph awaited Catharine in her native city, 
where certain Italian doctors came to expose her ignorance, and. aftei 
conferring with her. departed, ashamed and astonished." 

Florence having again plunged into war with Rome, Catharine 
visited it on a message of peace ; and, amidst its chaos of murdex 
and robbery, bore herself with unshaken courage. Though she used 
every effort to moderate the fury of the papal partisans, the Florentine 
mobs connected her with their excesses, and demanded her death by 
fire or sword. So vehement was the spirit conjured up against her, 
that her own friends were afraid to offer her an asylum. A body of 
the populace, having ascertained that she had withdrawn to a certain 
garden, rushed thitherward to seek her with drawn swords, shouting 
with frenzied voices, "Where is that accursed Catharine?" With 
serene aspect she went forth to meet them, and calmly confronting 
their wrid, wolfish eyes, exclaimed, "If I be the woman you seek, 
here I am. Do that which the Lord permits ye to do ; but, in His 
name, I forbid you to harm those that are with me." The chief of 
the insurgents, thrusting back his sword into his scabbard, said. 
" Begone, and save your life by flight ! " " No," said the undaunted 
woman, " I will not withdraw a step. If by pouring out my blood 
I can restore peace, why should I fly, now that the honour of Christ 
and the peace of His spouse are in peril ? " Silenced by her saintly 
dignity and calm, heroic spirit, the crowd fell back and dispersed, 
leaving her to pursue her way uninjured. 

In 1378, Urban sat in the chair of St. Peter, and that great schism 
took place which for so many years was the shame and bane of 
Christendom. Though lawfully elected, Urban was disowned by 



244 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



some of the cardinals, whom his arbitrary temper had offended ; and 
after setting up Clement VII. as anti-pope, they withdrew to Avig- 
non. Catharine wrote to them in a strain of pathetic eloquence, 
imploring them to retract their fatal error ; and she also addressed 
herself to Urban, urgently advising him to control the harsh dis- 
position which had roused so many enemies. Urban was wise 
enough and prudent enough to accept this advice gratefully ; and 
he wrote to Catharine, pressing her to visit him at Rome. She 
objected in reply that so many journeys were not profitable to a 
virgin ; but on his repeating his request, she complied. Her speech 
comforted him so much, that he desired her to address the members 
of the Sacred College ; a task which she accomplished with her 
customary grace and usual success. When she had ceased, the 
Pope turned towards the cardinals, and said, "My brethren, this 
should make us blush ; we are reproved by the courage of this poor 
humble maiden. I stand ashamed before her ! Poor, humble, do I 
call her? Yea, but not in contempt, — referring only to the natural 
feebleness of her sex. That she should be afraid, while we were 
courageous and resolute, would be no matter of surprise ; whereas 
it is we who are timid, while she, fearless and calm, inspires us with 
her noble words. What should Christ's Vicar fear, though the 
whole world were against him ? Christ, the All-Powerful, who is 
stronger than the world, can never forsake His Church." 

We gather some idea of the Pope's high appreciation of Catharine's 
zeal and eloquence from the fact that he intended sending her to 
Joan, Queen of Sicily, who had espoused the cause of Clement. 
To the regret of Catharine, the project was abandoned, owing to 
the personal danger it would have involved. She wrote to Joan, 
and also to the Kings of Florence and Hungary, urging them to 
renounce the schism. In the contemplated embassy, Catharine was 
to have been accompanied by a woman scarcely less remarkable 
than herself, — the beautiful Catharine of Sweden, daughter of St. 
Bridget, through whom she descended from the ancient royal race of 
Sweden. "To two women, one scarcely forty, the other several 
years younger, one a princess, the other a dyer's daughter, was to 
have been confided a task in which the peace of Christendom and 
the honour of the Church were engaged. Catharine of Sweden 
died in 1381 ; and, like her, Catharine of Siena did not long survive 



JEANNE D'ARC. 245 



this intended distinction. Worn out by the infirmities which had 
early afflicted her, she died at Rome on the 29th of April, 1380, in 
the 33rd year of her age." She was buried in the church of the 
Preaching Friars, known now as the Church of the Minerva ; but a 
year later, at the solicitation of the Republic of Siena, the head 
was severed from the decayed body, and removed to Catharine's 
native city, where, with great festal pomp, the sacred relic was 
interred in the old church of St. Dominic. In 1461, during the 
Papacy of Pius II. (^Eneas Silvius Piccolomini), himself a Sienese, 
the name of Catharine was enrolled in the Roman calendar of 
Saints. 

[An elaborate biography of " Catarina von Siena " has been written 
by Hase in German : the principal French authority is Chavin de 
Malan's "Histoirede Ste. Catharine de Sienna" (1846): and in English, 
Mrs. Josephine Butler's " Catharine of Siena : a Biography" (1879).] 

Another Enthusiast : Jeanne D'Arc. 

Jeanne d'Arc, or, as she is commonly called, Joan of 
Arc, was the daughter of a peasant of Domremy, a little 
village on the border of the legend-haunted forest of the 
Vosges. The village children lived upon enchanted 
ground, and breathed an enchanted atmosphere; they 
were nurtured amid those graceful superstitions which 
still lingered in the mysterious shades of the ancient 
woods. They knew each " ring " trodden by fairy feet, 
each pathway dear to elf and gnome; they hung the 
sacred trees with votive garlands, and sang songs to the 
"good folk," who prevented them from drinking of 
the magic well. These customs and influences had a 
powerful effect on the mind of Jeanne d'Arc, colouring 
her thoughts and dreams, and investing with romance her 
daily life. She loved the still solitude of the woodland, 



246 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

broken only by the song of an occasional bird; she 
loved the sweeping boughs and the green trees, and that 
shifting play of light and shade, the ferny dell, and the 
soft, fragrant turf. She loved to muse by the mossy 
spring which wrought such wonderful cures ; and, above 
all, the impressionable child delighted to betake herself 
to a lonely chapel, called the Hermitage of the Virgin, 
where, every Saturday, she suspended a wreath of flowers 
and burnt a taper of wax in honour of the Mother of 
Christ. Such a life acted strongly upon a quick imagi- 
nation and a pure and tender nature. She was but 
twelve years old when, walking on a Sunday in her 
father's garden, she suddenly saw a luminous glory by 
her side, and heard a voice uttering her name. Turning, 
she beheld (as in her simple faith she believed) the 
Archangel Michael, who bade her be good and dutiful and 
virtuous, and God would watch over her. In his radiant 
presence she felt overcome, yet at his departure she wept 
bitterly, and regretted that he had not taken her with 
him. Thenceforth she led a twofold life : the lonely life 
of romance and religious mystery, stimulated by the 
associations and scenery which surrounded her ; and the 
plain, practical home life, in which those who knew her 
saw only " a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways," 
who sewed and spun with laudable industry, ministered 
cheerfully to the poor and sick, and set a good example 
to the village maidens by the punctual discharge of her 
religious duties. 

In the narrow sphere to which she was confined, the 



JEANNE PARC. 247 



enthusiasm of her nature, thus happily inspired by a 
religious impulse, wanted an object on which to expend 
itself, — an object worthy of its intense force and spiritual 
fervour. Whether her life would be a failure or not, 
whether she would die with all the great capacities of her 
mind and heart undeveloped because unused, depended 
upon the finding of such an object. Providence willed 
that it should be found. While still very young, she began 
to hear of the long war between France and England, 
which had desolated her native land; and, indeed, 
her own family more than once had been compelled 
to seek shelter in the woods from the attacks of maraud- 
ing bands, returning to their humble roof when the 
storm had passed. She heard on every side of the 
misery inflicted by the victorious Burgundians, the ruth- 
less allies of the English ; and a deep pity for her 
country took possession of the girl's sensitive soul. In 
1424, the French underwent a disastrous defeat at 
Verneueil, and it seems to have been after this event 
that she first heard of an old traditional prophecy, ac- 
cording to which the salvation of France was to be 
achieved by a maid coming forth from Bois-Chesnu, the 
neighbouring wood of oaks. 

At last the object was discovered ! Her enthusiasm 
greedily seized upon it, and recognized the mission 
imposed by the will of Heaven. The green glades of the 
forest became alive with visions. One day, when she 
was in charge of her father's flock, she beheld the great 
Archangel, attended by St. Catherine and St. Margaret, 



248 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



the patron saints of the parish church. No doubt she 
had often seen their figures blazoned in the great stained 
glass windows which blotted the pavement with broken 
lights of gules and sapphire and emerald, as she knelt 
and prayed. St. Michael informed her that she was the 
virgin to whom the prophecy pointed, and that it was 
reserved for her to deliver France from the hands of the 
English. And he bade her conduct her sovereign to 
Rheims, then in English possession, in order that he 
might be crowned there. For this purpose he directed 
her to apply to Baudricourt, Governor of Vaucouleurs for 
the means of access to the King's presence; and he assured 
her that St. Catherine and St. Margaret would attend hei 
as her guides, protectors, and advisers. 

When she made known her " mission " to her parents, 
she was almost overwhelmed with ridicule and indigna- 
tion ; her father swore that he would drown her rather 
than that she should go to the field with the men-at-arms. 
In this resolution he at first persisted, to Jeanne's sore 
discouragement and anxiety ; but the " Voices," as she 
called the illusions of her devout enthusiasm, reiterated 
their commands, and in obedience to these she renewed 
her entreaties. " I must go to the King," she said " even 
if I wear my limbs to the very knees." She confessed that 
she would far rather spin in peace by her mother's side : 
the work was not of her choosing — our best work seldom 
is — but it must be done, she said, for the Lord willed it. 
They asked, Who was her Lord? With simple faith 
she replied, — "God." 



JEANNE PARC. 249 



At length the girl's strange mission was made known 
to the Governor of Vaucouleurs ; and he was so im- 
pressed by all he saw and heard, that he entered into 
communication with the King. Charles was then at 
the very nadir of his hopes and prospects, and grasped 
eagerly at anything which held out a promise of better 
things. After consultation with his council, he authorised 
the Governor of Vaucouleurs to take the necessary 
measures for sending her to Chinon. The distance to 
be traversed was about one hundred and fifty leagues, 
through a country garrisoned by the English, and infested 
by bands of murderous brigands, who spared neither 
age nor sex. To protect her from insult, this virgin of 
sixteen years, whose intense purity is not less remarkable 
than her exalted enthusiasm, assumed male attire, and, 
mounted on horseback, set out with an escort of only 
seven persons. The long and difficult journey was 
accomplished with an ease and a security which in 
themselves seemed to justify her pretensions to super- 
natural counsel. On the 20th of February, 1429, she 
arrived at Fierbois, a few miles from Chinon, and after 
a delay of two days, was admitted to the royal presence. 
Ushered into a spacious and brilliantly lighted hall, where 
some hundreds of knights, richly attired, were assembled, 
she at once singled out the King, though he had pur- 
posely divested himself of every distinguishing sign, 
and, bending her knee, exclaimed, " God give you 
good life, gentle sire!" At this prompt identification 
Charles was greatly astonished ; and, to test her further, 



250 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

he said, "I am not the King; he is yonder." "In 
God's name," she answered, " it is not they, but you, 
who are the King." And she continued with fervent 
speech : " Most noble Dauphin, I am Jeanne the Maid. 
The Heavenly King sends me to help you and the realm; 
and to tell you that you shall be anointed and crowned 
in the city of Rheims, and that you shall reign as lieu- 
tenant of the Heavenly King, who is the King of France." 
Leading her apart, Charles conversed with her for some 
time privately ; and it is known that her story greatly 
impressed him. Afterwards he told his courtiers that 
she had spoken to him of some secret matters of his 
own which no human agency could possibly have re- 
vealed to her. 

Next day, the Maid (La Pucelle), as she was commonly 
called, made her first appearance in public. Though 
not yet eighteen, she was tall, of a fully-formed and 
graceful figure, and exceedingly active and vigorous ; 
her countenance was open and intelligent in expression ; 
the forehead was broad and open, the eyes shone with 
a wonderful light, and long black tresses fell in abun- 
dance on her finely moulded shoulders. But what was 
most remarkable about her was the air of serene dignity, 
springing doubtlessly from her confidence in her great 
mission ; and her profound absorption, which was that 
of one ever engaged in communion with the " Unseen 
Powers " Though clothed in heavy armour, she managed 
her horse with wonderful ease and skill, so that to the 
excited multitude she seemed a more than mortal being — 



JEANNE PARC. 251 

1 knight who had descended from Heaven to save 
France — " a thing wholly divine, both to see and to 
hear" (" semble chose toute divine de son /aid, et de 
la veri et de Vouir "). O marvellous contagion even of 
enthusiasm ! Her faith in her mission inspired an equal 
faith in all who came within range of her influence, and 
spread from man to man, until a new spirit was kindled 
in the heart of France, and gray-headed captains, and 
battle-worn veterans eagerly pressed forward to enlist 
under the peasant-girl's banner. 

It was her ardent wish to march at once upon the 
English; but Charles checked her impetuosity, being 
desirous that her wonderful story should be left to work 
upon the minds of the English as well as upon his own 
subjects. The English, encouraged by their long roll 
of successes, had crossed the Loire, and sat down in 
force before the important town of Orleans. The besieg- 
ing army was composed of stalwart soldiers who feared 
no human foe ; but they were not free from the super 
stitions of the age, and it soon became evident that they 
regarded with apprehension the coming of a supernatural 
antagonist. Suffolk, their commander, and his officers 
endeavoured to combat their fears : but when they 
denounced her as an impostor, their soldiers pointed to 
the evidences she had already given of the truth of her 
claims ; and if they branded her as a sorceress, they 
rejoined that against the powers of darkness mortal men 
could not hope to prevail. 

At length it was determined by the French statesmen 



252 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

that Jeanne should attempt the relief of Orleans ; and 
at the head of two thousand men, her banner blazoned 
with fleur-de-lis waving before her, she set out on the 
enterprise which was to crown or deny the validity of her 
supernatural pretensions. Whatever we may think of 
these, we must own that nature had endowed her with 
great sagacity and an unconquerable resolution. She 
obtained at once a complete command over the rough 
warriors who followed her. At her bidding they ceased to 
utter their oaths and ribald jests ; they assembled regu- 
larly to hear mass ; they desisted from riot and plunder 
and unclean living. She was by no means averse, how- 
ever, to an innocent jest or a genial repartee ; and with 
that strong, shrewd sense which was so strangely allied to 
a mystical and fervid imagination, she repulsed the 
ignorant peasantry who solicited her to cure the sick, 
and brought crosses and chaplets to be blessed by her 
touch. With a lofty consciousness of the Divine origin 
of her mission, she issued orders to the English com- 
manders, Suffolk, Gladsdale, and Pole, that they should 
work no more distraction in France, but accompany her 
to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the 
infidel. At the same time she confidently promised 
victory to the French captains, if they would cross the 
Loire, and boldly lead their soldiers into the enemy's 
territory. These men. however, had had much experi- 
ence in war, and were disinclined to take their com- 
mands from a girl of seventeen, the daughter of an 
ignorant peasant. They were willing to use her as a 



JEANNE PARC. 253 



tool, but had little confidence, it would seem, in the 
genuineness of her claims to be divinely inspired. Still, 
as she advanced, her power and influence grew ; and 
the English army looked on with astonishment and even 
alarm, as, after passing unobserved through their lines, 
she rode into beleaguered Orleans, " bringing it the best 
aid ever sent to any one — the aid of the King of Heaven." 
The soldiers of France gained a new courage from her 
presence and example. In the belief that Heaven had 
visibly declared itself on their side, they no longer 
hesitated to engage the English ; and though the latter 
fought with all their old tenacity, they were overcome by 
preponderant numbers. Of all the forts with which they 
had enclosed the city, one only — the strongest — remained 
uncaptured. The French generals, were unwilling to 
push their successes further : " You have taken your 
counsel," said the Maid, '-and I have taken mine." 
The gates were thrown open, and, placing herself at the 
head of the men-at-arms, she led them against the 
Tourelles. The English fought with desperate courage; 
and the Maid, while planting a ladder against the wall, 
was wounded in the bosom by an arrow ; but having 
been carried to a vineyard, she had her wound dressed, 
spent a few minutes in silent prayer, and then rejoined 
the battle. Dureis, discouraged by the appearance of 
affairs, had ordered a retreat : — " Wait a while ! " ex- 
claimed the Maid ; "eat and drink ; and as soon as my 
standard touches the wall, you shall take the fort ! '" 
After resting and refreshing themselves, the men returned 



254 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

to the attack; the great banner of the fleura-de-lys 
fluttered against the rampart, and victory crowned the 
French arms. 

Next day, in sullen mortificaton, Suffolk raised the 
siege, setting fire to the entrenchments he had so long 
occupied, thus marking the first step in the inevitable 
decline of the English power in France. He drew up 
his army in battle-array in the vain hope of provoking 
the French to an engagement in the open field ; but the 
Maid was too prudent to allow her soldiers to accept the 
challenge. It was Sunday, she said ; a day to be spent 
in prayer, not in battle. The English, therefore, began 
their retreat northward, to be scattered among the 
various fortresses, until the arrival of reinforcements 
should once more permit Suffolk to resume the offensive, 
while Jeanne repaired publicly to the cathedral, and 
offered up her thanksgiving to the Lord of hosts. 

The stream of English fortune was now on the ebb. 
The French generals, still spell-bound by the fatal 
memories of Cresy and Agincourt, were fain to rest 
contented with the deliverance of Orleans ; but Jeanne 
had her appointed work to do, and would not allow 
them to remain inactive. She besieged Suffolk in 
Jargeau, and on the tenth day carried it by storm. 
The assault was led by herself in person ; but a blow on 
the head cast her headlong from the ramparts. Though 
unable to rise, she continued to enco'irage her fighting- 
men with her voice. " Onward, countrymen," she cried, 
" fear nothing ; the Lo*-d has delivered them into your 



JEANNE D'ARC. 255 



hands ! " In the hot, fierce struggle which followed, 
Suffolk was taken prisoner, and the town then surren- 
dered. Mehun, Baugency, and other fortresses, quickly 
followed the example of Jargeau. At Patay, the chival- 
rous Talbot, whom Shakespeare has immortalised, was 
defeated and captured. Encouraged by these brilliant 
successes, Charles was induced to adopt the Maid's 
earnest counsel, and proceed to Rheims for his corona- 
tion. His march thither resolved itself into a triumphal 
procession ; Chalons and Troyes threw open their gates, 
and Rheims received him with a clamorous welcome. 
The coronation took place on the 17th of July. During 
the gorgeous ceremony, the Maid, with silken banner 
unfurled, stood by Charles's side, his champion and 
deliverer; but as soon as it was ended, her confidence 
in herself and her work seemed suddenly to vanish, and, 
throwing herself on her knees, she embraced his feet, 
and besought permission to return to her village home. 
" Oh, gentle King," she exclaimed with pathetic earnest- 
ness, " the pleasure of God is done." He so urgently 
pressed her, however, to remain with the army until the 
English were driven from France, that she could not 
refuse; though to the Archbishops she exclaimed, — 
"Would it were the will of God that I might go and 
keep sheep once more with my sisters and brothers ! 
They would be so glad to see me again." 

The successful career of the Maid naturally excited 
the astonishment of her contemporaries, and seemed to 
sustain and confirm her pretension to be the special 



256 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

instrument of the Heavenly King ; as, indeed, she was, 
though not in the sense which she and her countrymen 
imagined. We must admit that there was something 
remarkable in the ascendency attained by this village- 
girl ; in the ease with which she adapted herself to 
entirely new and unusual conditions of life ; in the 
dignity with which she moved among the nobles and 
captains of France ; and in the capacity she showed for 
military command. But to the historian an explanation 
of her brief and splendid career is not necessary j he 
sees clearly enough that the fabric of English supremacy 
rested on a foundation of sand, which any violent ex- 
ternal shock would at once overthrow. The English 
army at first maintained its victorious position entirely 
through the prestige which it had won upon so many 
memorable battle-fields ; but as soon as the French 
recovered from their abject terror, and regained their 
natural and national courage, that prestige lost its value, 
and their great numerical strength necessarily prevailed. 
It was the peculiar merit and distinction of the Maid 
that her enthusiasm relighted the glow of patriotism in 
the heart of France ; that she gave the impulse which 
was required to set in motion the energy of a gallant 
and patriotic people, weakened by internal dissensions, 
and sacrificed by incompetent leaders. 

The English Regent, John, Duke of Bedford, recog- 
nized the full extent of the perils which menaced the 
English dominion, and strove to overcome them with 
an energy and a military genius not inferior, I think, to 



JEANNE D'ARC. 257 

that of his famous brother. Forced marches brought 
him into the neighbourhood of the French King, where 
he endeavoured to engage in a pitched battle. But 
Charles shrank from the hazards of the open field ; 
partly because he remembered the day of Agincourt, 
and partly because the Maid seemed to have lost her 
inspiration. As she advanced towards womanhood, her 
self-confidence decreased, and " the Voices " spoke to 
her more rarely. She retained, however, her political 
insight ; and while Bedford carried his battalions into 
Normandy, she advised King Charles to attempt the 
recovery of Paris. Soissons, Senlis, Beauvais, and 
St. Denis received him with open arms. He then 
advanced to Montmartre ; and, after proclaiming an 
amnesty, delivered an attack against the faubourg of 
St. Honore. At the beginning of the action, which 
lasted four hours, Jeanne was dangerously wounded, and 
thrown down in the fosse, where she lay unnoticed until 
the evening, when she was discovered by a party sent in 
search of her. The assault proved unsuccessful ; and 
Charies retired to Bourges, while the Maid, who re- 
garded her wound as a warning from heaven that her 
mission was at an end, dedicated her armour to God in 
the church of St. Denis. Well would it have been for 
her if she had adhered to this resolution, and withdrawn 
into the tender privacies of domestic life ; but Charles 
persuaded her to resume the sword ; and she tarnished 
to some extent the lustre of her patriotic enthusiasm by 
accepting a patent of nobility for herself and her family ,. 



258 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

with a yearly income equal to that of an earl. Her 
services fully merited this reward ; yet who will not wish 
that she had contemptuously refused it ? 

I have brought the story of Jeanne d'Arc down to the 
border-line of her sweet womanhood, and have shown 
how wholly and entirely it is the story of a religious 
enthusiast, of a gentle heart and a fervid imagination 
brought under the influence of a lofty purpose. A 
religious enthusiast she remained to the last, and to the 
last she kindled with a deep love for her unhappy country ; 
so that her piety and her patriotism became the two 
dominant impulses of her career. It was, on the whole, a 
sad career ; its early blaze of glory was so soon obscured 
by clouds, and absorbed in the deep shadow of Death. 

In an attack upon Compiegne she was made prisoner 
by the Bastard of Vendome, who sold her to the Duke 
of Burgundy, and he disposed of her to his ally, the 
Regent, Duke of Bedford. She was thrown into prison ; 
and after a year's captivity, during which King Charles 
made no effort to procure her release or mitigate the 
rigour of the treatment to which she was subjected, she 
was brought to trial, on a charge of heresy and sorcery, 
before an ecclesiastical tribunal. The proceedings lasted 
sixteen days, and were conducted with shameful injustice. 
Her judges, who were also her enemies, endeavoured in 
the subtlest manner to wrest from her an admission that 
she had been the agent of evil spirits. But with admi- 
rable courage and constancy she maintained her position, 
baffling them by her quick and ready answers. They 



JEANNE PARC. 259 



argued that the fact of her capture was a proof that God 
had forsaken her. "Since it has pleased Him that I 
should be taken," she replied, " all is for the best." 
<: Will you submit to the judgment of the Church 
Militant?" "I came to the King of France," she 
answered, " by commission from God and from the 
Church Militant above : to that Church I submit." 
" Do your Voices forbid you to submit to the Church and 
the Pope?" "Not so indeed, for our Lord first served." 
Towards the end, she grew physically exhausted, and 
then she wavered a little ; but she still bravely resisted the 
theory of diabolical possession. And when sentence was 
delivered against her, she cried, " I hold to my Judge, to 
the King of heaven and earth. In all that I have done, 
God has been my Lord. The devil has never had power 
over me." In a moment of sudden weakness, or from a 
desire to exchange her English prison for the prisons of 
the Church, she was induced to subscribe an act of 
abjuration, and consented to abandon the male attire she 
had worn. In the eyes of the Church, this assumption of 
male attire was a crime; and when, to defend herself 
from insult, she resumed it, she was declared guilty of 
a relapse into heresy. Tearful and trembling, she was 
led to the stake ; and as she passed along in the holy 
light of her innocent purity, the brutal soldiery were 
hushed into silence. One of them took a stick, shaped 
it into a rude cross, and handed it to her. She clasped 
it to her bosom. The pile was kindled ; but in this last 
supreme trial she recovered all her courage, and, as if a 



26o CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



new revelation had burst upon her, exclaimed, " Yes, 
my Voices were of God! They have never deceived 
me ! " As, in truth, they never do deceive the true 
Christian soul and earnest patriot heart. " The fiery 
smoke rose up in billowy columns. A Dominican monk 
was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in 
his sacred office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted 
in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was 
racing up the stairs to seize her, even at that moment did 
this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend 
that would not forsake her, bidding him with her last 
breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave her 
to God." The flames gathered around their victim, and 
as they folded her in their deadly embrace, her head 
sank on her breast and she breathed her last word, 
"Jesus !" Then the crowd, awe- struck and remorseful, 
slowly quitted the market-place which this terrible tragedy 
had for ever rendered infamous. " We are lost," cried 
an English warrior, " we are lost ; we have burned 
a saint ! " 

Thus lived and died an enthusiast, — closing a patriot's 
life by a martyr's death. She had scarcely reached the 
full maturity of womanhood, for she was not one-and- 
twenty when she perished in the market-place of Rouen. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A GROUP OF EXEMPLARY CHARACTERS. 

madame de miramion. elizabeth carter. 

caroline herschel. — madame pape-carpantier. 
— mrs. fry. lady fawshawe. mrs. godolphin. 

Madame de Miramion. 

MARIE BONNEAU DE RABELLE was born on 
the 2nd of November, 1629. When about nine 
years old, she lost her mother; and the loss affected her 
so deeply that a serious illness was the result. As soon as 
she had somewhat recovered, her father placed her under 
the contending influences of an aunt who loved dearly 
all the gay pastimes of society, and a pious governess, 
whose thoughts were always dedicated to graver things. 
Marie was of a thoughtful disposition, and she preferred 
the teaching of the governess to the example of her aunt. 
Her delight was to draw near to her Heavenly Father in 
prayer, and to render Him faithful and lowly service by 
waiting upon the poor and sick. On the occasion of a 
great ball given by her aunt, she was missed from the 

glittering throng. The dancers waited for her, but she 

18 



262 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



was nowhere to be found, until the seekers traced her 
to a small retired chamber, where she was found on her 
knees by the bedside of a man-servant, who was dying 
in anguished convulsions. This incident supplies us 
with a key to the secret of her life ; she loved God, and 
she despised the world. Though young and handsome 
and wealthy, society had no charm for her sweet, grave 
temper. She had studied the teaching of Christ's life, 
and strove to act up to it. 

She was only fourteen when her father died. With 
exceptional wisdom and prudence she then undertook 
the management of the household, and the supervision 
of the education of her younger brothers. In May 1645, 
when in her sixteenth year, — and still a girl, though with 
a woman's gravity, — she married M. de Miramion. Her 
ideal of a married life, however, was an erroneous one ; 
she says that she and her husband never spoke together 
of anything save death, — a strange misinterpretation of 
the spirit of the Christian faith, which would have us use 
life, but not abuse it, and nowhere imposes on us the 
oppressive atmosphere of the charnel-house. As M. de 
Miramion died in the sixth month of their marriage, it 
is possible that their conversation may have been deter- 
mined in its choice of subjects by his illness, and it may 
have been directed to comfort and strengthen him. 

For two years the girl-widow lived in great retirement. 
She made it publicly known that she d.d not intend to 
marry again ; but she was rich and beautiful, and only 
eighteen, and the world refused to take her at her word. 



MADAME DE MIRAMION. 263 

Suitors thronged around her. Of these the most con- 
spicuous and the most audacious was Bussy de Rabutin, 
the wit and courtier, a cousin of Madame de Sevigne, 
and a man of notoriously dissolute character. Her 
wealth was exactly what he needed for the repair of his 
broken fortunes. He saw her twice in a church, and 
the sacredness of the place was no check on his worldly 
ambition ; he was pleased with the girl-widow's beauty, 
and resolved to carry her off and force her into a mar- 
riage, — not counting on much resistance from so young 
and gentle a creature, and trusting not a little to his 
personal address and comeliness. 

Madame de Miramion was spending her eighteenth 
summer at a country-house a few miles from Paris. She 
received several anonymous warnings; but having no 
knowledge of Bussy de Rabutin's sudden passion for her- 
self and her fortune, failed to understand, and did not 
act upon them. One fine August morning, she left 
Issy in an open carriage, accompanied by her mother-in- 
taw, two female attendants, and an old squire, to offer 
up her prayers at the shrine on ' Mont Valerien. When 
within a mile or so of their goal, twenty men on horse- 
back suddenly surrounded them, changed the horses, 
and compelled the coachman to drive in a different 
direction. In vain Madame de Miramion cried for help ; 
the scene was lonely, and no help came ; the cavalcade 
dashed forward rapidly, and soon plunged into the depths 
of the woods of Livry. Here the track was so narrow 
that the horsemen could no longer keep ground on 



264 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

either side the carriage, but were forced to divide into 
two bodies, of which one preceded and the other followed 
it. Madame de Miramion seized the opportunity to 
spring out and run away, but the brambles and thorns 
impeded her ; and finding herself pursued, she gave up 
the attempt, and returned to the carriage, which her 
captors soon afterwards stopped, in order to expel the 
elder Madame de Miramion, her attendant, and the old 
squire. Her own attendant and a footman, who declared 
that they would never desert her, remained with the young 
widow. Food was offered to her, but she refused it. 

The journey was continued, the horses being changed 
at regular stages. Madame de Miramion invariably 
called for assistance in every town and village through 
which they passed; but as her escort represented her 
to be a poor mad lady, whom they were taking away by 
order of the Court, and as her dishevelled hair, torn wig 
and kerchief, and the blood on her face and hands, 
seemed to confirm the story, all believed it, or felt, at 
least, that they had no right to disbelieve it. At length 
they reached the ancient feudal castle of Lannai, with 
its massive walls, frowning battlements, and clanking 
drawbridges. When within its gloomy precincts, she re- 
fused to alight ; but a gentleman, whom his uniform 
showed to be a Knight of Malta, advanced with cour- 
teous bow, and besought her to enter the hall. 

" Is it by your orders that I have been carried away ? " 
she inquired. 

" No, madame," he replied, with another obeisance ; 



MADAME DE MIRAMION. 265 

" it is by the orders of Monsieur Bussy de Rabutin, 
who assured us that he had obtained your consent." 

"Then he has spoken falsely," she exclaimed, in- 
dignantly. 

" Madame," he replied, " we are here two hundred 
gentlemen, friends of Monsieur de Rabutin ; but if he 
has deceived us, rest assured that we shall espouse your 
side, and set you at liberty." 

Madame de Miramion alighted, and was ushered into 
a low, damp room on the ground-floor. A fire was 
kindled, and for a seat she was provided with the cush- 
ions of her own carriage. A couple of loaded pistols 
lay upon a table ; these she eagerly seized, prepared to 
use them, if need be, in defence of her liberty and 
honour. Food was brought, but she declined to touch 
it, and vehemently demanded to be released. Bussy de 
Rabutin was surprised by this courageous attitude. " I 
thought to rind a lamb," he exclaimed, " and I have 
caged a lioness ! " He hesitated to enter her presence, 
and only summoned up the audacity to do so when 
accompanied by a dozen of his friends. On perceiving 
him, the young widow sprang to her feet, exclaiming, " 1 
vow, by the Living God, my Creator and yours, that 1 
will never be your wife." So intense and overwhelming 
was her passion, that she fell back on the cushions 
almost senseless. A doctor who was present felt her 
pulse ; it was so low — for forty hours she had tasted no 
food — that he thought she was dying; but she would 
take no restoratives or refreshments, until Bussy, alarmed 



266 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

at the critical situation, swore to set her at liberty. 
" When the horses are harnessed, and I am in my car- 
riage, I will eat," said this brave eighteen-year-old girl ; 
and she had her way. 

At length the carriage crossed the drawbridge, and 
rolled along the road for Sens* The Knight of Malta 
attended Madame de Miramion until within a hundred 
yards of the town, endeavouring to mitigate her anger 
against her unscrupulous abductor. When he took his 
departure, the coachman and postilion, terrified at the 
hazard in which they had involved themselves, unhar- 
nessed the horses, and galloped away, leaving Madame 
de Miramion and her two attendants to reach the town 
on foot. They found the gates shut, and were informed 
that all the town was coming, by the Queen's command, 
to effect the deliverance of a lady who had been carried 
off. "Alas, I am that lady!" replied Madame de 
Miramion. 

Her trouble was now at an end ; and Bussy de Rabutin 
and she did not meet again for six-and-thirty years. 
The remainder of her life she spent in works of bene- 
volence and piety, ministering to the sick, feeding the 
hungry, comforting the sorrowful, and relieving the op- 
pressed. For any one content to act the Good Samaritan, 
there is always an abundance of opportunities. Of those 
which fell to her lot, Madame de Miramion made noble 
use ; and thousands — aye, and tens of thousands — pro- 
fited by her boundless charity, and lived to murmur her 
name in tones of gratitude. 



MRS. ELIZABETH CARTER, 267 



Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. 

Let us turn from this heroine of chanty to a woman 
of letters, from the French Madame de Miramion to 
our English Elizabeth Carter. Of this ripe scholar and 
true woman, a charming little sketch has recently been 
supplied by Miss M. Betham-Edwards. 

She was born of an honourable and a scholarly family 
at Deal, in 171 7, just one-and-twenty years after the 
death of Madame de Miramion. Her lettered tastes 
and intellectual powers she derived from her father, the 
Rev. Dr. Carter, perpetual curate of Deal, and one of 
the six preachers of Canterbury Cathedral. To all his 
children, boys and girls alike, he wisely gave a learned 
education ; but it does not appear that Elizabeth took 
advantage of it in her earlier years. On the contrary, 
she made such slow progress in acquiring the rudiments 
of Latin and Greek, that her father advised her to 
abandon all idea of ever becoming a scholar. But she 
was endowed with a masterful perseverance ; she worked 
incessantly, even far into the night, so that she was 
obliged to take snuff to keep her awake, and eventually 
succeeded. There can be little doubt, as Miss Betham- 
Edwards remarks, that what was regarded in her case as 
a lack of natural ability, was simply a slowness to learn 
anything by a bad method. As soon as she discovered 
a method for herself, her progress became exceedingly 
rapid. But she could not feed on the husks of Latin 
and Greek grammarians, with their senseless rules and 



3fl? CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

involved definitions ; she required to get at the principles 
of grammar, and when she had gained them, she was 
swift and direct in their application. So she ripened 
into a sound scholar. At seventeen she translated some 
of Anacreon's Odes ; and such was her facility in Latin 
that her brother, then at Canterbury school, wrote to 
her in great pride to boast that he had rendered an Ode 
of Horace so well, his version was supposed to have 
been done by her. At twenty she was a thorough Greek, 
Latin, and Hebrew scholar, and had a fair knowledge 
of Italian, Spanish, and German — three languages which 
she taught herself; French she had acquired in child- 
hood ; in later life she learned Portuguese and Arabic. 

" Nor were the ordinary acquirements of young ladies 
of the upper ranks of society neglected. She was a 
first-rate housewife and needlewoman, and also took 
lessons in drawing and music ; she was an excellent 
dancer," says Miss Edwards, k ' had some dramatic taste, 
and could play cards and share in any other social 
amusement." Her affectionate biographer with some 
hesitation admits that this learned young lady was, 
"when very young, somewhat of a romp.'' There were 
no gymnasiums for lady students in those days ; and if 
Elizabeth Carter indulged in a game of Hide-and-seek or 
Blind Man's Buff with her brothers and sisters after four 
or five hours' work in the library, she was but following 
a natural instinct ; and, by following it, probably saved 
herself from the fatal consequences of over-work. 

To a friend of her early days she writes : — " I walked 



MRS. ELIZABETH CARTER. 269 

three miles yesterday in a wind that I thought would 
have blown me out of this planet, and afterwards danced 
nine hours, and then walked back again. Did you ever 
see or hear of anything half so wonderful ? And what 
is still more so, I am not dead." Clearly she was no 
girl-pedant, no morose and ungenial " blue-stocking," but 
a healthy maiden, with a capacity for keen enjoyment and 
a hearty delight in the pleasures that sweeten labour. 
She pushed her application, however, beyond the verge 
of prudence. Throughout life she remained an early 
riser, getting up at four or five in summer in her 
youth, and between six and seven in old age ; but, unfor- 
tunately, she kept late hours at night. And what was 
worse, she resorted to all kinds of ingenu'ties to prevent 
herself from falling asleep ; such as taking snuff, chewing 
green tea and coffee, and wrapping a wet towel round her 
head and body, — practices against which the young 
reader must be warned as of a very injurious and even 
dangerous character. 

Her industrious life was unmarked by any romantic 
incidents. She had many opportunities of marriage, for 
she was handsome and attractive as well as accom- 
plished; but she preferred the independence of single 
life and its leisure for study. Once she seemed to favour 
a suitor; she was, perhaps, really in love; but the 
gentleman had published some verses which, though not 
absolutely immoral, yet seemed to show too light and 
licentious a turn of mind. After wavering for some time, 
she decided against him, from a feeling of duty and 



270 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

religious principle. For Elizabeth Carter was truly and 
deeply religious, not only in the conventional, but in the 
highest sense of the word. She adored Socrates, Plato, 
and Epictetus ; but she remained a devout Christian and 
loyal Churchwoman throughout the whole course of her 
existence, — "her piety being of the right kind, infusing 
not only resignation and an unwavering sense of duty 
into every action, but cheerfulness, nay, joyousness, from 
early youth till the last." 

Before she was out of her teens, Elizabeth Carter 
became famous. Some published translations from her 
pen attracted general commendation, and one, " Sir 
Isaac Newton's Philosophy Explained, for the use of 
Ladies, in six Dialogues on Light and Colour," translated 
from the Italian of Algarotii, was favourably noticed by 
Dr. Birch, a competent authority. "This work," he 
says, " is now rendered into our language, and illustrated 
with several curious notes by a young lady (daughter of 
Dr. Nicholas Carter of Kent), a very extraordinary 
phenomenon in the republic of letters, and justly to be 
ranked with the Sulpitias of the ancients, and the 
Schurmans and Daciers of the moderns." * 

On the whole, I think the life of Elizabeth Carter 
may rightly be held up to English maidens as a very 
useful and pleasant example. We can wish them nothing 
better than that, like her, they may be studious and 

* Sulpitia was a Latin poetess in the time of Tiberius ; Anna 
Maria Schurman, a scholar of some repute, died in 1678 ; Anne 
Dacier, who translated Homer into French, died in 1720. 



CAROLINE HERSCHEL. 271 

accomplished, yet not indisposed to enjoy the innocent 
amusements of life ; a dutiful and loving daughter ; a 
true friend ; active in all works of benevolence ; and 
firmly confident in the great and holy truths of the 
Christian religion. 

Caroline Herschel. 

It has been well said that " great men and great 
causes have always some helper, of whom the outside 
world knows but little." Of the noble company of un 
known, or, at all events, little-known helpers, Caroline 
Herschel was one. " She stood beside her brother, 
William Herschel, sharing his labours, helping his life. 
She loved him, and believed in him, and helped him 
with all her heart and with all her strength." A more 
remarkable instance of complete self-abnegation, of self- 
sacrifice for another's sake, biography does not record. 
She lived for and in her brother, and cared only to see 
him happy and famous. "She might have become a 
distinguished woman on her own account, for with the 
'seven-foot Newtonian sweeper' given her by her brother 
she discovered eight comets first and last. But the 
pleasure of seeking and finding for herself was scarcely 
tasted. She ' minded the heavens ' for him." 

Caroline Lucre tia Herschel was born at Hanover in 
1750. She came of a Protestant family, long distin- 
guisned by its musical gifts. Isaac, her father, was a 
musician, and paid vigilant attention to the musical 
training of his sons, while he left his daughters to 



272 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN, 

discharge the domestic duties. The little Caroline, the 
youngest, grew at an early age to great proficiency in 
the art of stocking- knitting ; and in later years would 
proudly describe how her first pair touched the floor as 
she stood up finishing them off. She learned also a 
little music ; though this was in opposition to the wishes 
of her mother, who held, 1 suppose, the old belief that 
the arts and sciences and letters were exclusively 
intended for " the other sex." The three elder sons, 
Jacob, William, and Alexander, soon displayed an excep- 
tional musical talent ; and Jacob and William, while 
Caroline was still in her childhood, carried their gift to 
England, in the hope of turning it to profit. They 
returned home on a visit at the end of twelve months ; 
Jacob with " a quantity of English clothes made accord- 
ing to the latest fashion," and William with a copy of 
Locke's dull " Essay on the Human Understanding." 
William stayed in England until recalled five years later 
by his father's declining health. The family received 
him with a welcome which might well have tempted 
him to remain for life in the bosom of a family so 
devoted to him. As for Caroline, her devotion ap- 
proached almost to a fanaticism : — " Of the joys or 
pleasures," she afterwards wrote, " which all felt at this 
long-wished-for meeting with my — let me say dearest 
brother, but a small portion could fall to my share, for 
with my constant attendance at church (which was 
rendered necessary by her being prepared for confirma- 
tion) and school, besides the time I was employed in 




CAROLINE HERSCHEL. 



CAROLINE HERS CHE L. 273 



doing the drudgery of the scullery, it was but seldom 
I could make one in the group when the family were 
assembled together. In the first week, some of the 
orchestra were invited to a concert, at which several 
of my brother William's compositions, overtures, etc., 
and some of my elder brother Jacob's were performed, 
to the great delight of my dear father, who hoped and 
expected that they would be turned to some profit by 
publishing them; but there was no printer who bid high 
enough. Sunday was the — to me — eventful day of my 
confirmation, and I left home not a little proud and 
encouraged by my dear brother's approbation of my 
appearance in my new gown." 

In another letter she speaks of her mother's unfortunate 
antipathy to educated women, and its evil effect upon 
herself: — 

" My father wished to give me something like a 
polished education, but my mother was particularly deter- 
mined that it should be a rough, but at the same time a 
useful one ; and nothing further she thought was neces- 
sary but to send me two or three months to a sempstress 
to be taught to make and mend household linen. All 
that my father could do was to indulge me (and please 
himself) sometimes with a short lesson on the violin, 
when my mother was either in good humour or out of 
the way. But sometimes I found it scarcely possible to 
get through the work required, and felt very unhappy 
that no time at all was left for improving myself in music 
or fancy-work. I could not bear the idea of being 



274 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

turned into an Abigail or housemaid, and thought that 
with the above and suchlike acquirements I might 
obtain a place as governess in some family." 

It is painful to read of this struggle after knowledge, 
mis wrestling with untoward conditions ; but Caroline 
Herschel had a brave heart and a strong, clear brain, and 
every leisure hour she could obtain she devoted to the 
work of self-improvement. She was not able, however, 
to attain to any independent position ; and her lot in life 
seemed destined to be one of household drudgery, when 
her brother William, who had settled at Bath as a teacher 
of music, proposed that Caroline should join him there. 
In 1772, when she was already twenty- two years of age, 
and had crossed the threshold of womanhood, this pro- 
posal was carried out; and thenceforward her career 
underwent a new and happier development. 

" William Herschel was at this time an eminently 
successful professor of music. He had large numbers 
of pupils, he was organist to the Octagon Chapel at Bath, 
and also director of the Public Concerts. But every 
available moment of leisure, and every spare shilling were 
devoted to the pursuit of astronomy. He, indeed, already 
gave lessons in that science, and was recognised as an 
authority on scientific subjects in the place. Caroline 
thus found him, on her arrival, absorbed in work, study, 
and speculation, and became at once his fellow-worker 
and helper. The least selfish of mortals, the most 
unsparingly devoted of women, she nevertheless lets a 
plaintive word or two escape on the forced inferiority 



MADAME PAPE-CARPANTIER. 275 

and subordinateness of her position." ' The time," she 
writes, " when I could hope to receive a little more of 
my brother's instruction and attention was now drawing 
near, for after Easter, Bath becomes very empty ; only a 
few of his scholars, whose families are resident in the 
neighbourhood, remain. But I was greatly disappointed, 
for, in consequence of the harassing and fatiguing life 
he had led during the winter months, he used to retire 
to bed with a basin of milk, or glass of water, and Smith's 
" Harmonies of Nature," or Ferguson's "Astronomy;" 
and his first thoughts on rising were how to obtain 
instruments for viewing those objects himself of which he 
had been reading." She adds : — " I was much hindered 
in my musical practice by my help being continually 
wanted in the execution of the various contrivances, and 
I had to amuse myself with making the tube of pasteboard 
for the glasses which were to arrive from London, for at 
that time no optician had settled at Bath." From this 
temporary discouragement, however, she soon recovered, 
and throwing herself with full ardour into her brother's 
studies, soon rendered herself indispensable ; so that, 
until he married, sixteen years afterwards, she deservedly 
and happily occupied the first place in his heart and 
home. 

Madame Pape-Carpantier. 

Among educational reformers few hold a more eminent 
place than Madame Pape-Carpantier, who did so much 
towards settling primary education upon a basis of right 

19 



276 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

principles , and as a practical instructer of the young, has 
scarcely had an equal. She was the posthumous daughter 
of a French soldier, killed during the brief Napoleonic 
revival of the "Cent Jours," and was born at La Fleche, 
a small town in the department of La Sarthe, in 1815. 
Poverty and hard work overshadowed her early life. At 
eleven years of age, having been prepared for her first 
communion, she was withdrawn from school to assist her 
mother in the household duties, and having neither 
teachers, books, nor leisure, was forced to sew twelve 
hours a day. She was gifted, however, with exceptional 
natural capacity; and by utilising to the full the few 
opportunities that came in her way, attained some idea 
of verse, and, in her fourteenth year, commemorated her 
father's patriotic death by composing an Ode to Glory. 
The following sketch of her life is adapted from her own 
words : — 

tl I worked with my hands," she says, " until I was 
nineteen, a prey to the most ardent thirst after knowledge, 
which it was impossible to satisfy. I do not believe it is 
possible for any human being to be tormented with a 
stronger craving. My mother endeavoured to obtain for 
me the post of directress of a Salle d'Asile, or infant- 
school, which a literary and philosophical society intended 
to establish at La Fleche. In consideration of my father's 
patriotic death, both my mother and myself were named 
joint directresses, and we went to Le Mans to learn the 
system of teaching introduced there by M. and Madame 
Pape, whose son afterwards became my husband. 



MADAME PAPE-CARPANTIER. 277 

Returning to La Fleche, we discharged our duties there 
without interruption for four years, and our efforts excited 
considerable interest. My verses" — she continued to cul- 
tivate her poetical taste — -" became popular, and brought 
me a good deal of sympathy. They were published in 
the Coral papers, and the little social circle of La Fleche 
made me its pet, its spoiled child. People called me La 
Muse, la Gloire du Pays ; but I could not allow my head 
to be turned. I felt that I was charged with the accom- 
plishment of a task, which as yet I had not clearly 
denned ; but it was to be the development of education 
by natural methods and by means of the affections. 

" After four years of indefatigable labour my strength 
was exhausted, and, indeed, I was brought, I believe, to 
the verge of the grave. Trembling for my mother's 
future, I accepted the situation of companion to a widow 
lady in our town, who undertook to maintain her in case 
of my death. Thus I recruited my energies, and my 
marriage with M. Pape the younger had been arranged, 
when I was called upon for a great sacrifice. The city 
of Le Mans required a model Salle d'Asile ; and as both 
M. and Madame Pape were dead, I was asked to under- 
take its management. For a week I hesitated, struggling 
between love and duty. Duty at last prevailed, and I 
was installed as directress at Le Mans with considerable 
ceremony, in 1842. It was there that I wrote my two 
books, "Les Conseils" and " L'Enseignement Pratique." 
My poems had already appeared in Paris under the title 
of ' Preludes,' and procured me many friends. 



278 

" In 1847 I was summoned to the capital for the pur- 
pose of organising a Teacher's Training School (Ecole 
Norma le) for the Salles d'Asile ; and in 1849, M. Pape, 
officer in the African army, having been able to exchange 
into the Republican Guard of Paris, had now returned, 
and we were at last married, after two years' betrothal. 
Family life now added its sweetness and its duties to 
those of my profession ; but I did not long enjoy such 
happiness. My husband died in 1858, and I was left 
with my two little girls to rear, as well as three orphans, 
my brother's children, and a youth, left by our first 
mistress, who had died some years before. I had to 
work hard in order to bring up these children, every 
morsel of bread being, I may say, fairly earned. I have 
gained no fortune, but I have the consciousness of having 
accomplished a work, of having been an instrument of 
progress, that is to say, of having moved one step for- 
ward in the way of God." 

Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. 

Not less earnest and energetic in good works, though 
her Christian benevolence flowed in a different channel, 
was Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, to whom the cause of Prison 
Reform in England was so largely indebted. 

She was the third daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gurney, 
the Quaker bankers of Norwich, where she was born on 
the 21st of May, 1780. As a child she was "fair, shy, 
and quiet," and her mother showed her appreciation of 
her gentle character by calling her "my dove-like Betsy." 



MRS. ELIZABETH FRY. 279 

She appeared to have learned by intuition the lesson 
that if speech be silvern, silence is golden. Like most 
sensitive children, she had a great awe and dread of 
the darkness, but she never made known her fears, 
Firm of will, even to obstinacy, yet in look and manner 
and speech she was very gentle. To a wish or a request 
she would yield immediately ; but a command found her 
as immovable as a rock. There was something excep- 
tional in her very abilities ; she showed no brilliancy, no 
rapidity of acquisition, but remarkable tact, insight, and 
independence of thought. Owing to extremely delicate 
health, she made little progress in her studies, and her 
amusements were all of a tranquil and meditative cast ; 
she loved shells and insects and flowers, and took great 
delight in the collection of natural curiosities, forming a 
kind of museum. The example and teaching of her 
parents awoke in her loving, tender spirit an early re- 
sponse ; and she listened, morning and evening, with 
intense and solemn interest, to the family devotions, 
which, for the children, were conducted by their mother. 
That mother, a beautiful and an amiable woman, she 
loved with an almost passionate affection, nay, we 
might justly say, with an affection of almost morbid depth 
and strength. " The thought that she might die and 
leave her behind, often made her lie awake and weep at 
night. She seldom left her side, and she watched her 
sleeping, haunted by a fear that her mother might cease 
to breathe, and waken no more from that calm slumber 
which resembled all that she had heard and knew of 



280 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

death." Her presentiment was to some extent fulfilled, 
for she was left motherless at the age of twelve, — a calamity 
which darkened her young life, and was bitterly felt even 
to her own declining days. 

It is interesting to note, as an incident of her childhood 
which foreshadowed her future sphere of usefulness, that 
she had a great desire to visit a prison, so that her father 
at last took her to see a bridewell. The impression it 
produced was never effaced. 

As years passed away, Elizabeth Gurney grew up into 
a tall and slender girl, of graceful figure, with a pleasing 
countenance and a singular charm of manner. She had 
lost the silent reserve of her childhood, and was full of 
vivacity ; dancing and singing with great liveliness, and 
riding both well and fearlessly. Her biographer hints 
that she was lapsing into worldliness ; for not attending 
the Quaker meetings she put forward ill-health as an 
excuse, and on the rare occasions that she did attend, 
her restlessness and uneasiness could not be concealed. 
The religious impulses of her childhood had lost their 
force, and she had sunk into an indifferent and apathetic 
condition. A change of feeling took place when she 
reached her seventeenth year, and she began to reach 
forward with vague yearnings to the hope and faith ot 
the Christian. But with her morbid independence of 
character she would read no religious books ; she would 
have no companion or monitor but the New Testament; 
and resolved to wait and rest until the Holy Spirit 
poured His light into her soul. 



MRS. ELIZABETH FRY. 28] 



Some interesting self-revelations are contained in the 
pages of the journal which she kept at this period. 
They present us with the picture of a complex character, 
but one which could hardly fail to ripen into a noble and 
beautiful one : — 

"Monday, May 21st, 1797. — I am seventeen to-day. 
Am I a happier or a better creature than I was this time 
twelvemonths ? I know I am happier ; I think I am 
better. I hope I shall be much better this day year than 
I am now. I hope to be quite an altered person ; to 
have more knowledge; to have my mind in greater order; 
and my heart, too, that wants to be put in order as much, 
if not more, than any part of me — it is in such a fly- 
away state ; but I think, if ever it settled on one object, 
it would never, no, never, fly away any more ; it would 
rest quietly and happily on the heart that was open to 
receive it." 

" June 20th. — If I have long to live in this world, may 
I bear misfortune with fortitude ; do what I can to 
alleviate the sorrows of others ; exert what power I have 
to increase happiness ; try to govern my passions by 
reason ; and strictly adhere to what I think right." 

"July 7th. — I have seen several things in myself and 
others I never before remarked; but I have not tried 
to improve myself. I have given way to my passions, 
and let them have command over me. I have known 
my faults and not corrected them ; and now I am deter- 
mined I will once more try, with redoubled ardour, to 
overcome my wicked inclinations. I must not flirt ; I 



282 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

must not even be out of temper with the children ; 1 
must not contradict without a cause ; I must not mump 
when my sisters are liked and I am not; I must not 
allow myself to be angry; I must not exaggerate, which 
I am inclined to do ; I must not give way to luxury ; I 
must not be idle in mind: I must try to give way to 
every good feeling, and overcome every bad. I will see 
what I can do ; if I had but perseverance, I could do 
all that I wish : I will try. I have lately been too satirical, 
so as to hurt sometimes : remember it is always a fault 
to hurt others." 

"July nth. — Company to dinner. I must beware of 
not being a flirt ; it is an abominable character ; I hope 
I shall never be one, and yet I fear I am one now a 
little. Be careful not to talk at random. Beware, and 
see how well I can get through this day, without one 
foolish action. If I do pass this day without one foolish 
action, it is the first I ever passed so. If I pass a day 
with only a few foolish actions, I may think it a good 
one." 

"August 6th. — I have a cross to-night. I had very 
much set my mind on going to the Oratorio ; the Prince 
is to be there, and by all accounts it will be quite a grand 
sight, and there will be the finest music; but if my father 
does not like me to go, much as I wish it, I will give 
it up with pleasure, if it be in my mind, without a mur- 
mur. — I went to the Oratorio; I enjoyed it, but spoke 
sadly at random : what a bad habit ! " 

Through misgivings and hesitations, doubt and appre- 



MRS. ELIZABETH FRY. 283 

hension, with much self-questioning and self-blame, 
Elizabeth Gurney still strove in her feeble way to gain 
some sure foundation on which she might rest secure amid 
the quicksands of the world. She longed for the truth, 
and yet hesitated to grasp it; she was fain to lay hold 
upon religion, and yet shrank from it lest "she should 
be enthusiastic" — that is, I suppose, fanatical. It was a 
time of wavering and uncertainty, which caused her much 
trouble of hearc and mind ; but every day was bringing 
her nearer to a tranquil and assured acceptance of the 
truth that is in Jesus. The nerveless wings were begin- 
ning to recover their strength, and the soul was trying 
them, tremblingly at first, but with daily increasing con- 
fidence. She was not yet eighteen when she met with 
William Savery of America, a man of great eloquence 
and enthusiasm, who was preaching a kind of Quaker 
revivalism. His influence upon Elizabeth Gurney was 
all for good. His words smote through the crust of 
worldliness that had accreted about her real self, and she 
sprang at once into a solemn consciousness of the 
duties incumbent upon every child of immortality. This 
was no mere emotional phase, the effect of a stimulus 
applied to an excitable imagination; it was the conviction 
of her understanding as well as the decision of her heart. 
She gave up both music and dancing, because she felt 
that they unduly excited her ; though that music should 
produce an unwholesome excitement, I find it difficult to 
believe. Nor in excitement itself, if not excessive, do I 
find anything dangerous. On this point Miss Kavanagh 



284 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

ofters some remarks which are both just and beauti- 
ful. " The excitement of religion," she says, " is not its 
noblest part — no more is it so in pleasure or art ; but it 
exists : to deny it would be useless. Of all the ideas 
which can absorb a human heart, there is none more 
exciting than religion : it gives to this life its aim and 
aspirations, and holds before our gaze the solemn 
mysteries of a life yet to come. God, futurity, our souls, 
all that we can conceive of sublime, or awful, or sym- 
pathetic, lie comprised in the word. That perfect calm- 
ness which a mistaken idea of religion has caused so 
many to seek, would be the death of the soul, if it were 
possible ; but it is not. The Supreme Being alone may 
unite incessant action to eternal repose. That repose does 
not exist even in Nature ; she is not always calm and 
soothing : she has aspects and murmurs more seductive 
than man's sweetest music, because infinitely more beauti- 
ful. We may indeed strive to check the outpourings of 
the spirit with which we have been gifted, but we can 
never wholly succeed : if the pleasant and the beautiful 
are to be set aside, something must take their place. 
God gave them to us as antidotes against the sordid 
cares of life, against instincts less noble and feelings far 
more selfish. Is our wisdom greater than His ? " 

A religion without excitement is apt to be a religion 
without earnestness, — a religion in which the intellect is 
concerned and not the heart. Elizabeth Gurney, in her 
acts of self-renunciation, went, as it seems to me, too far, 
and for a wrong reason; but she did what in her 



LADY FANSHAWE. 285 

conscience she believed to be right, and her conduct, 
therefore, claims and deserves our admiration. Sacrifice 
is too rare in this world for me to be willing to speak of 
it in depreciatory terms. 

Such was the girlhood of Elizabeth Gurney, and I 
think we may easily see how it was the natural and fitting 
prelude to the womanhood of Elizabeth Fry. Of that 
noble womanhood I shall say no more than she herself 
said during her last illness in 1845: "Since my heart 
was touched at seventeen years old, I believe I never 
have awakened from sleep, in sickness or in health, by 
day or by night, without my first waking thought being 
• how best I might serve my Lord. ' " 

Lady Fanshawe. 

Of that admirable Lady Fanshawe, who affords so 
bright an example of conjugal devotion, and whose 
charming Memoirs present such a vivid picture of our 
great Civil War, we know but little as girl and maiden ; 
but that little is not without interest and value. She 
was the daughter of Sir John and Lady Harrison, and 
was born in 1625. Of her mother she relates a strange 
anecdote, which the reader will regard, I think, with 
curiosity. She says, — 

" My mother being sick to death of a fever three 
months after I was born, her friends and servants 
thought, to all outward appearance, that she was dead, 
and so lay about two days and a night ; but Dr. Win- 
ston, coming to comfort my father, went into her room, 



286 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

and, looking earnestly on her face, said, •' She was so 
handsome and now looks so lovely I cannot think she is 
dead ; ' and suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket and 
with it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this 
he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed again 
and to be rubbed, and by such means as these she came to 
life, and opening her eyes saw two of her kinswomen stand 
by her, my Lady Knollys and my Lady Russell, both with 
great wide sleeves, as the fashion then was, and said, — 

" ' Did you not promise me fifteen , years ? and are 
you come again ? ' 

" Which they not understanding, persuaded her to 
keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein 
she was ; but, some hours after, she desired my father 
and Dr. Howlsworth (a divine) might be left alone with 
her ; to whom she said, — 

" ' I will acquaint you, that during the time of my 
trance I was in great quiet, but in a place that I could 
neither distinguish nor describe ; but the sense of leav- 
ing my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, 
remained a trouble upon my spirits. 

" ' Suddenly I saw two by me, clothed in long white 
garments, and methought I fell down with my face in 
the dust ; and they asked me why I was troubled in so 
great happiness. I replied, "Oh, let me have the same 
grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years to 
see my daughter a woman." To which they answered, 
" It is done." And then, at that instant, I woke out of 
my trance.' " 



LADY FANS HA WE. 287 

On her recovery from this remarkable illness, Lady 
Harrison gave herself up with loving energy to the 
education of her beloved child, who had "all the advan- 
tages that time afforded, both for working all sorts of 
fine work with my needle, and learning French, singing and 
the lute, the virginals and dancing ; and notwithstanding 
I learnt as well as most did, yet was I wild to that degree 
that the hours of my beloved recreation took up too 
much of my time ; for I loved riding, in the first place, 
running, and all active pastimes ; in short, I was that 
which we graver people call a hoyiing girl ; but, to be 
just to myself, I never did mischief to myself or other 
people, nor one immodest word or action in my life, 
though skipping and activity were my delight ; but upon 
my mother's death I then began to reflect, and, as an 
offering to her memory, I flung away those little childish- 
nesses that had formerly possessed me, and, by my 
father's command, took upon me the charge of his house 
and family, which I so ordered, by my excellent mother's 
example, as found acceptance in his sight." 

Sir John Harrison was a staunch Royalist, and when 
the standard of Civil War was raised, drew his sword on 
the King's side. The Long Parliament thereupon ordered 
the confiscation of his estates, and his family suffered 
considerable privation. 

"My father," she says, "commanded ray sister and 
myself to come to him to Oxford, where the Court then 
was ; but we, that had till that hour lived in great plenty 
and great order, found ourselves like fishes out of the 



288 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

water ; and the scene so changed, that we knew not at 
all how to act any part but obedience. For, from as 
good a house as any gentleman of England had, we 
came to a baker's house in an obscure street ; and from 
rooms well-furnished, to lie in a very bad bed in a 
garret; to one dish of meat, and that not the best 
ordered ; no money, for we were as poor as Job ; nor 
clothes more than a man or two brought in their cloak- 
bags : we had the perpetual discourse of losing and 
gaining towns and men : at the windows, the sad 
spectacle of war, sometimes plague, sometimes sicknesses 
of other kinds, by reason of so many people being 
packed together, as I believe there never was before 01 
that quality ; always in want ; yet I must needs say, that 
most bore it with a martyr-like cheerfulness. For my 
own part, I began to think we should all, like Abraham, 
live in tents all the days of our lives." 

It was in those evil days that Anne Harrison met 
with the gallant cavalier, Sir Richard Fanshawe, who 
soon afterwards became her husband. " Both his for- 
tune," she says, " and my promised portion of ten 
thousand pounds, were both, at that time, in expecta- 
tion ; and we might truly be called merchant-adventurers, 
for the stock we set up our trading with did not amount 
to twenty pounds betwixt us ; but, however, it was to us 
as a little piece of armour is against a bullet, which, if 
it be right placed, though no bigger than a shilling 
serves as well as a whole suit of armour ; so our stock 
bought pen, ink, and paper, which was my husband's 



MRS. GODOLPHIN. 280 



trade, and by it we lived better than those that were 
born to two thousand pounds a year, as long as he had 
his liberty." The marriage was crowned with the happi- 
ness which comes from a true union of true hearts. 
Lady Fanshawe, however, survived her husband, and, in 
her " Memoirs," has raised a noble monument to his 
worth. 

Mrs. Godolphin. 

In Miss Kavanagh's " Women of Christianity " I find 
a graceful sketch of Evelyn's well-loved and amiable 
friend, Mrs. Godolphin, whose too brief life was an 
enduring illustration of the law of Christian charity. 
Miss Kavanagh has summarised Evelyn's biography of 
this good Samaritan ; and, in my turn, I condense and 
abridge Miss Kavanagh's summary. 

Mistress Margaret Blagge, when Evelyn first knew 
her, was maid of honour to the Duchess of York, and, 
after her death, to the Queen, Catherine of Braganza. 
He long professed his indifference to her personal charms 
and many excellent qualities, though his wife, and some 
friends who knew her well, persisted, that though she 
had lived at Court from her twelfth year, she was really a 
very charming and virtuous person. This he did not 
deny, though " to believe there were many saints in 
that country he was not much inclined." It was not 
until circumstances almost forced him to renew acquaint- 
ance with her at Whitehall that he discovered his 
mistake, and, with mingled surprise and admiration, 



290 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



meditated on the fact that " so young, so elegant, so 
charming a wit and beauty should preserve so much 
virtue in a place where it neither naturally grew, nor 
was much cultivated." 

Acquaintance, as Evelyn learned to know her in all 
her goodness, speedily grew into friendship. Her pro- 
found and simple piety touched the good man to the 
heart. " What a new thing is this," he saicl to himself ; 
' w I think Paula and Eustachium are come from Bethle- 
hem to Whitehall!" In a conversation which Evelyn very 
pleasantly relates, Mistress Blagge indirectly pressed him 
'•to be friends;" and, half in jest, half in earnest, she 
even drew up, signed and dated, a compact of " in- 
violable friendship," which, though sentimental, was by 
no means insincere ; and warmly entreated Evelyn, who 
was in very truth old enough to be her father, to regard 
her henceforth as his child. With much emotion Evelyn 
consented, and until her premature death six years 
later, faithfully discharged the responsibility he had 
taken upon him. 

Margaret Blagge had entered the household of Anne 
Hyde, Duchess of York, at twelve years of age ; and in 
a post which the prevailing licentiousness of the Court 
rendered painfully difficult, as well as in that of maid of 
honour to Queen Catherine of Braganza, had conducted 
herself with rare modesty and decorum. Her diary 
contains some curious entries concerning the mode of 
life forced upon her by her situation. " When I go 
into the withdrawing-room," she writes, " let me con- 



MRS. GODOLPHIN. 291 



sider what my calling is, — to entertain the ladies, not to 
talk foolishly to men, more especially the king." Against 
Charles II. she seems to have been particularly on her 
guard, for a second entry runs, " Be sure never to talk to 
the king." 

Never was a profligate and infidel court adorned by a 
more pious and devoutly-minded maid of honour. 
Modest in her bearing, austerely devout in fasting, prayer 
and vigil, living apart from the world and its pleasures, 
cheerful, kindly-natured, discreet and wise, to the simpli- 
city, the gentleness, and the sweet fervour of youth she 
added those colder virtues which are geneially regarded 
as the fruit of experience and years. The proof of the 
deep sincerity of her piety is found in her unresting 
benevolence, " than which," as Evelyn says, "I know no 
greater mark of a consummate Christian." She devoted 
much of her time and labour to " working for poor people, 
cutting out and making waistcoats and other necessary 
coverings, which she constantly distributed amongst 
them, like another Dorcas." She diligently sought out 
and visited the poor in " hospitals, humble cells, and 
cottages." Evelyn tells us that he frequently went with 
her on these angel-visits to squalid nooks and lonely 
corners of the town ; and he dwells admiringly on the 
patient tenderness with which she ministered to the sick, 
and the gentle grace with which she taught them the 
truths of Christ's Gospel She was assisted in her work 
of charity, and especially in the difficult task of seeking 
out worthy objects, by a poor widow of good character 



292 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEA. 

whom she employed for this purpose. It was through 
her agency that Mistress Blagge paid her weekly pensions, 
discharged the debts of necessitous prisoners, and kept a 
number of orphan children at school. Her income was 
not large, but, well managed, it accomplished a large 
amount of good. Evelyn informs us that, though he 
himself knew of twenty-three indigent persons whom she 
" clad at one time," this was but a small portion of her 
charity. She was one of those true Samaritans who do 
good by stealth, and blush to find it fame ; and to avoid 
the ostentation of publicity, she would fare forth alone 
and on foot, in mid-winter's darkest days, and in its most 
inclement weather, that she might carry help and comfort 
and consolation to the poor creatures whose only friend 
on earth she was. 

There is a striking contrast between the glittering life 
to which her duties as maid of honour called her, and 
that to which her natural goodness of heart and Christian 
sympathy inclined her. " Often have I known her 
privately slip away," says Evelyn, " and break from the 
gay and public company, the greatest entertainments, 
and greatest persons, too, of the Court, to make a step to 
some miserable, poor, sick creature, whilst those she 
quitted have wondered why she went from the conversa 
tion ; and more they would, had they seen how the scene 
was changed from a kingly palace to some mean cottage, 
from the company of princes to poor necessitous 
wretches ; when by-and-by she would return as cheerful, 
and in good humour, as if she had been about some 



MRS. GODOLPHIN. 



293 



worldly concern, and excuse her absence in the most 
guileless manner imaginable. Never must I forget the 
innocent pleasure she took in doing charities. 'Twas 
one day that I was with her, when seeing a poor creature 
on the streets, ' Now,' says she to me, ' how will I make 
that miserable wretch rejoice ! ' upon which she sent him 
ten times more than I am confident he ever could expect. 
This she spake, not as boasting, but so as one might 
perceive her very soul lifted up in secret joy, to considei 
how the miserable man would be made happy with the 
surprise." 

As her income was limited, Margaret Blagge, to carry 
out her schemes of charity, was compelled to many acts of 
self-sacrifice, and restricted her personal expenses to the 
lowest possible amount. The customs of the Court forced 
her occasionally to play at cards, but she never did so 
without compunction ; and in her diary she writes, on 
one occasion, with obvious self-reproach : — 

" June 2nd. — I will never play this half-year, but at 
threepenny ombre, and then with one at halves. I will 
not ; I do not vow, but I will not do it. What ! lose 
money at cards, yet not give the poor ! 'Tis robbing 
God, mis-spending time, and mis-employing my talents, 
three great sins. Three pounds would have kept three 
people from starving [for] a month ; well, I will not 
play." 

There was a beautiful harmony in the life of this good 
and gifted woman ; the same savour of goodness pervaded 
it from her childhood to her womanhood ; she was always 



294 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the same at heart and in conduct, — gentle, pitiful, pure 
and generous, loving God, and showing her love of God 
by her beneficence towards God's poor. It was a happy 
moment for her when she obtained permission to retire 
from Court, the pleasures of which afforded her no 
amusement, and the licentious tone of which offended 
her virtuous soul. So great was her joy that, on entering 
her apartment, she knelt and gave thanks to God for His 
infinite mercy in delivering her from what she had felt to 
be a painful and oppressive thraldom. Her eyes sparkled, 
and her cheeks glowed, and she could not restrain an 
open declaration of delight, as she sprang into the carriage 
that was to bear her away from the scenes of a meretri- 
cious and unwholesome splendour. 

On leaving Court, Mistress Blagge resided for awhile 
with her friend Lady Berkeley. She had some thought of 
withdrawing to a remote and sequestered country house, 
and leading a life of Christian celibacy, when her loving 
nature directed her into a different and a happier path. 
Her youthful beauty had naturally attracted many ad- 
mirers ; among whom one soon stood forward more 
conspicuously than the others, — a grave and reserved 
gentleman, of moderate estate but ancient family, with a 
high character for ability, Sidney Godolphin, afcerwards 
Queen Anne's famous minister and Marlborough's friend 
and colleague. A mutual attachment sprang up between 
them, though Godolphin's comparative poverty threw 
obstacles in the way of their union for nine years. When 
she left Court, Mistress Blagge began to consider the 



MRS. GODOLPHIN. 295 

difficulties that lay before them with a feeling that they 
were interposed by Providence, and that an unmarried life 
would be more pleasing in the sight of God, as affording 
greater opportunities, which, in truth, it does not, of 
doing Him service. Her affection for Godolphin, how- 
ever, was in no wise shaken; and a severe struggle took 
place between love and duty, or what she conceived to 
be her duty. "The Lord help me, dear friend," she 
wrote to Evelyn, " I know not what to determine ; some- 
times I think one thing, sometimes another ; one day I 
fancy no life so pure as the unmarried, another day I 
think it less exemplary, and that the married life has 
more opportunity of exercising charity ; and then again, 
that 'tis full of solicitude and worldliness, so as what I 
shall do I know not." 

Again she writes : — " Much afflicted, and in great 
agony, was your poor friend this day, to think of the 
love of the holy Jesus, and yet be so little able to make 
Him any return. For with what fervour have I protested 
against all affections to the things of this world, resigned 
them all, without exception ; when, the first moment I 
am tried, I shrink away, and am passionately fond of the 
creature, and forgetful of the Creator. This, when I con- 
sidered, I fell on my knees, and, with many tears, begged 
of God to assist me with His grace, and banish from me 
all concern but that of heavenly things, and wholly to 
possess my heart Himself, and either relieve me in this 
conflict, now so long sustained, or continue to me strength 
to resist it, still feiring, if the combat cease not in time. 



296 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

I should repine for being put upon so hard a duty. But 
then again, when I call to mind the grace of self-denial, 
the honours of suffering for my Saviour, the reward pre- 
pared for those that conquer, the delights I shall conceive 
in seeing and enjoying Him, the happiness of the life 
above, I that am thus feeble, thus fearful, call (out ol 
exercise of His grace), yea, for tribulation, for persecu 
tion, for contradictions, and for everything agreeable to 
the spirit and displeasing to the flesh." 

Human feelings triumphed, and Margaret Blagge was 
married to Sidney Godolphin, in the Temple Church, 
London, on the 16th of May, 1675. 

A marriage of two hearts made one by love and sym- 
pathy, it was necessarily a happy marriage ; and a year 
later, writing to her true and tried friend, Evelyn, she 
pours out her grateful feelings in a strain of simple but 
earnest eloquence. It shall be my last quotation, and 
the reader will perceive that it is animated by the devout 
and grateful spirit which inspired her earliest utterances : — 

" Lord, when 1 this day considered my happiness in 
having so perfect health of body, cheerfulness of mind, 
no disturbance from without nor grief within, my time 
my own, my house quiet and pretty, all manner of con- 
veniences for serving God in public and private, how 
happy in my friends, husband, relations, servants, credit, 
and none to wait or attend on but my dear and beloved 
God, from whom I receive all this, what a melting joy 
ran through me at the thoughts of all these mercies, and 
how did I think myself obliged to go to the foot of my 



MRS. GO DOLPHIN. 297 

Redeemer, and acknowledge my own unworthiness of 
His favour; but then what words was I to make 
vise of? — truly, at first, of none at all, but a devout 
silence did speak for me. But after that I poured out 
my prayers, and was in amazement that there should be 
such a sin as ingratitude in the world, and that any 
should neglect this great duty. But why do I say all 
this to you, my friend ? — Truly that out of the abundance 
of the heart the mouth speaketh, and I am still so mil of 
it, that I cannot forbear expressing my thoughts to you." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THREE ILLUSTRIOUS FRENCHWOMEN t 

madame roland. — madame michelet. — eugenie 
de guerin. 

Manon, Madame Roland.* 

PROFESSOR SHARP, in his lectures on " Culture 
and Religion," says some wise words in defence of 
ideal aims. How, he says, are we to make anything of 
the Actual unless we have some aim to direct our efforts, 
some clue to guide us through its labyrinths ? Now, 
this aim, this clue, is just what we mean by the Ideal ; 
and a life without the Ideal is necessarily a purposeless 
and a motiveless life, — a life degraded to low and servile 
objects. " An aim, an ideal of some sort, be it natural 
or spiritual, you must have, if you have reason, and look 
before and after. True, no man's life can be wholly 
occupied with the ideal, not even the poet's or the philo- 
sopher's. Not even the most ethereal being can live 
wholly upon sunbeams ; and most lives are far enough 

* Born, 1754 ; married De Roland de la Platiere, French states- 
man and Girondist, 1781 ; guillotined, 8th November, 1793. 




MADAME ROLAND. 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 299 

removed from the sunbeams. Yet sunshine, light, is 
necessary for every man. The Culturists then speak 
truly when they tell us that every man [and woman] must 
have some ideal, and that it is all-important that, while 
the mind is plastic, each should form some high aim 
which is true to his own nature, and true to the truth oi 
things. It has been well said that youth is the season 
when men are engaged in finding their ideals. In maturt 
age they are engaged in trying to impress them on tru 
actual world." 

Madame Roland in her youth found her ideal, which 
she afterwards sought to impress upon the minds of her 
fellows. She failed in the high endeavour, and her failure 
led her to an early and a painful death. Yet neither her 
life nor her death was wholly in vain. The story has 
since moved many hearts and stirred many minds, 
awakening them to a sense of the beauty of " plain living 
and high thinking," and urging them on not only to 
"dream" but to "do" noble things. Moreover, she 
herself was the better, aye, and the happier, for her devo- 
tion to a sublime aim and motive. It consecrated her 
womanhood as it had brightened and purified her girl- 
hood. It lifted her above the commonplaces and con- 
ventionalities of the world, into a serener sphere of 
thought and feeling. It rescued her from— 

" The daily scene 
Of sad subjection and of sick routine," 

and gave her a standpoint of her own, from which she 



300 CHILD-LIFE 01 REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

could perceive the need and the duty of doing something 
to advance the great cause of human progress. 

I believe that Madame Roland was the most remark- 
able woman whom Revolutionary France produced ; 
indeed, I am not sure that that country has ever given 
birth to a finer spirit. The nobleness of her motives, the 
breadth of her sympathy, the purity of her character, the 
fervour of her genius invest her with a charm and an 
interest such as no other Frenchwoman possesses. If 
we accept Marie Antoinette as symbolizing all that was 
brightest and most graceful in the aristocracy of her 
time, Madame Roland naturally comes to be taken as 
the type of all that was best and brightest in its republi- 
canism. Her influence was as elevating as it was exten- 
sive ; and the force of her eloquence, enhanced by the 
spell of her beauty, drew around her the boldest and 
most ardent enthusiasts. Yet, perhaps, it was not so 
much her eloquence, though it was of a rich, picturesque, 
and poetical strain, to which the melody of her voice lent 
an additional attraction ; nor her beauty, though nature 
had endowed her lavishly with personal graces, with an 
elegant figure, an expressive countenance, and natural 
dignity of manner; — it was not, perhaps, so much her 
eloquence or her beauty, as the force of her character 
and the inspiration of her earnestness that took captive 
the hearts of men. Carlyle describes enthusiasm as "the 
fundamental quality of strong souls ; the true nobility of 
blood, in which all greatness of thought or action has its 
rise." The power of such enthusiasm, in a woman 



MANOJV, MADAME ROLAND. 301 

beautiful and pure like Madame Roland, was irresistible. 
She had dedicated her soul to Liberty ; and her devotion 
was evidently so sincere, her aspirations were evidently 
so unselfish, that those who listened to her and watched 
her daily life, and were brought into contact with her 
faith and constancy, could not but submit to the spell of 
the enchantress. When this fair, sweet creature was 
prepared to do and dare and suffer in the cause of free- 
dom, what man worthy of the name could refuse to 
follow in her steps ? Like the " Maid of France," the 
virgin-enthusiast of Arc, she was ever in the front rank, 
ever in the advance ; and craven indeed must have been 
the knight who would not have couched his lance under 
the banner of such a leader ! 

Mauon (Marie-Jeanne) Philipon was born at Paris in 
1754. She was the second child of Gratien Philipon 
and his wife, Marguerite Bimont, and the only survivor 
of a family of five children. The father was an engraver 
of moderate ability, who also dealt in jewels and objects 
of vertu. His circumstances were those of an opulent 
tradesman, so that Manon passed her childhood in con- 
siderable comfort. After being carefully reared by a strong 
peasant woman near Arpajon, she returned to her parents 
a robust and healthy child. While still of tender years 
she gave proof of the firmness of her will when opposed by 
force, as of the gentleness of her disposition when guided 
by affection. She was grave, reserved,, and meditative. 
When about six years old she had refused, during an 
illness, to take a nauseous dose of medicine. Her father,. 



302 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

a man of rigid sternness, immediately corrected her, and 
required of her obedience ; again she refused, and the 
punishment was repeated ; a third time came the order 
that she must drink the medicine; silent, but resolute, 
she offered herself for the expected penalty. Her mother 
then interposed with a few mild words of reproof and 
entreaty. Without further objection, the child drank off 
the potion. Moved by his daughter's strange tenacity of 
purpose, M. Philipon thenceforth abandoned the charge 
of her to his wife, and desisted from a tyranny of disci- 
pline which must have been fruitful in evil results. 

It was fortunate for Manon that her mother, a woman 
of more than ordinary talent, was also a woman of sincere 
piety. At her instance the child every Sunday attended 
the Catechism class, whose members the cure' of the 
parish duly prepared for confirmation. The quaint old 
French version of the Bible became her daily study ; 
while she pored as eagerly over the marvellous stories 
which illuminate the pages of the " Lives of the Saints " 
as an English child over those of " Robinson Crusoe " 
or "the Arabian Nights. " She read incessantly — history, 
biography, geography, fact, and fiction ; and when all 
her store of books was exhausted, she dipped into the 
abstruse mysteries of heraldry, and began, though of 
course she could not thoroughly understand, a treatise 
on Contracts ! The Abbe Bimont, her maternal uncle, 
promised to teach her Latin ; but he was a blithe, rotund, 
and indolent priest, under whose irregular tuition she 
made but little progress. Her favourite companion was 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 303 

that " Bible of heroes," Plutarch's "Lives;" those grand 
old biographies which have taught so many minds how 
to live virtuously and die bravely. Seated in a quiet 
corner of her father's atelier she spent happy hours over 
each haunted page, and, with a spirit in advance of her 
years, would often let the book drop from her hands, 
while the tears streamed down her cheeks, and she lost 
herself in dreams of the past glories of Athens and Sparta, 
and old Rome. Why was not I a Greek, she would 
exclaim, born in the bright, free land of Hellas ? or a 
countrywoman of the virtuous Cincinnatus and the 
godlike Scipio? Her soul was already fired with a 
burning desire to rival the example of the "brave men 
of old ; " and the young girl, while still on the threshold 
of maidenhood, felt that she was capable of the last 
sacrifice in the cause of Liberty. Certainly, a strange 
childhood was that of Manon Philipon's, but a fit prelude 
to her exalted womanhood. It was spent among books 
and flowers, the twin objects of her passionate devotion ; 
it resembled a dream of enthusiasm and romantic senti- 
ment and lofty aspiration. She soon discovered that in 
the France of Louis XV. there were no opportunities of 
rivalling the heroes of Sparta or of Rome, and fell back, 
in her visionary fervour, on a life of religious mysticism. 
Her new idols were Xavier and Loyala, St. Elizabeth and 
St. Theresa. Setting aside her Plutarch, she turned to 
the pages of the Aurea Legenda. There she read of 
devout men and women who had borne all things for 
the love of Jesus, obloquy and poverty, hunger and 



3 04 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

thirst and wretchedness, and had consummated their life- 
long agony by the martyr's death. She longed to follow 
in their footsteps, even if they led to the stake. It can 
plainly be seen that the leading feature of her character 
was the capacity of self-sacrifice ; and I believe that no 
careful observer would have predicted for this dreamy 
and enthusiastic girl a happy life or a peaceful end. 
The coming events of her womanhood cast their shadows 
before. She was always longing after a grand life, like 
George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke ; and her longing was 
fully satisfied ; but grand lives are seldom happy lives. 

Always aspiring after some ideal of heroic service, she 
resolved at last to devote herself to the work of the 
Church; and, at her earnest request, her parents con- 
sented to her entering a convent for a twelvemonth, 
preparatory to her receiving the first communion. 
For this purpose they selected the establishment 
of La Congregation, in the Rue Neuve St. Etienne, in 
the Faubourg St. Marcel. She entered it as a pupil 
in May 1765. She found herself one of four-and- 
thrrty pupils, varying in age from seven to eighteen ; 
and though nearly the youngest, quickly outstripped 
them all in the acquisition of knowledge and the faithful 
discharge of religious exercises. A poet in heart and 
brain, though devoid the gift of poetical expression, she 
felt a keen enjoyment in the world of visionary calm and 
serene meditation that now surrounded her, — in the dimly- 
lighted chapel, with its arched roof and shadowy niches, 
the rolling thunder of the organ music, the sweet 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 305 

harmonies of matin and vesper, the silent prayer, and the 
celestial hush and peace that were present always and 
everywhere. Shunning the society of her companions, 
she sat apart under the trees, reading and thinking ; or 
paced the silent cloisters, and mused over the grave of 
some young nun who had been early called away from 
the conventual solitudes and silences. It may be said 
that all this was an unreal and artificial religion ; certainly, 
it was not so much the religion of faith and knowledge 
as the mysticism of an excited imagination. Manon, 
however, was unconscious of any error of belief or 
practice; and it must, I think, be conceded that the 
influence of her exalted pietism tended to purify and 
elevate her character throughout her later life, inspiring 
that tenderness of feeling and loftiness of purpose which 
distinguished her from the other heroines of the French 
Revolution. 

The happy austerity of the convent and its devout 
meditations, she lefc with regret. On her return home, 
she found that her father had plunged into the political 
excitement which was beginning to threaten the social 
order of France, throwing the management of his busi- 
ness upon her mother. There was no fit place for 
Manon under the engraver's roof; and she was accord- 
ingly relegated to the charge of her grandmother, a 
woman of moderate means, who lived in quiet and com- 
fort in the He St. Louis, then a cluster of old and moss- 
grown streets in the bosom of the Seine. For some 
years Manon, like the poet in Festus, sank back into 



3 o6 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

herself, and made no sign. She studied laboriously, 
and reflected constantly, in the leisure left her after the 
performance of the household duties. Her principal, if 
not her only relaxation seems to have been the active 
correspondence which she maintained with two of her 
convent friends, Henriette and Sophie Cannet, — a corre- 
spondence which throws a flood of light on the tendencies 
of her exalted and ardent genius, while it illustrates the 
development of her spiritual nature with singular fulness. 
It was at this time that she began to experience that 
reaction or revolution of thought and feeling which most 
serious minds sooner or later experience. For at first, 
in the happy credulity of ignorance, we believe every- 
thing ; then, in the arrogance of imperfect knowledge, we 
doubt everything. Happy he who has finally passed 
through Doubt into Faith, the faith of reason and con- 
viction ; has bravely faced the spectres of the mind, and 
dismissed them. Thus he comes, at length, " to find a 
stronger faith his own." Thus does he learn — 

" That life is not an idle ore, 

* * * * 

But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears, 

And battered with the shocks of doom, 

* * * * 

To shape and use." 

This great trial and torture of the soul came upon 
Manon Philipon. We have seen how entirely her re- 
ligious faith had hitherto been a thing of the heart and 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 307 

the imagination ; a visionary creation, pure and bright 
enough, it is true, but deficient in that solidity which 
only an earnest acceptance of Christ's teaching can give. 
She was not unconscious that much was wanted to 
strengthen her emotional impulses and convert her hopes 
into beliefs ; so she began a course of studious investi- 
gation. But France, in that age of spreading infidelity 
and unreason, offered no safe guide for her anxious 
spirit. She devoured the writings of the so-called Philo- 
sophers of the Encyclopaedia, — Descartes, Diderot, and 
Voltaire ; but in abandoning the simplicity of childhood 
she strayed into the devious paths of a miserable fanati- 
cism. She rejected a creed which seemed to her in- 
capable of logical proof, but accepted no other. For 
a while she doubted even the immortality of the soul ; 
for a while she denied even the existence of a Supreme 
Being ; but it shows the natural purity and loftiness of 
her soul that in this dreary depth of unbelief she adhered 
to as severe a standard of moral obligations as the most 
conscientious Christian could adopt. She acknowledged 
that the Gospel was the best code of morals she knew, 
and declared that her whole conduct should be regulated 
by it. But it was only her understanding that went 
astray ; and when she listened to the promptings of her 
heart, she flung aside the cold and cheerless doctrines of 
the atheist. "In the contemplation of nature," she 
wrote, " my heart, moved by it, rises towards that vivi- 
fying Principle which animates it ; that high Intelligence 
which governs it; that Goodness which, through its 



308 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

means, provides me with so many pleasures. And when " 
— this was written in later life, during her imprisonment 
— "impenetrable walls separate me from all I love, and 
the crimes and vices of society seem to unite in punish- 
ing me for having desired its highest good, I look 
beyond the limits of this life to the reward of our sacri- 
fices hereafter, and the intense joy of a future re-union ! " 
The lot of Manon Philipon was cast in a stormy time. 
France, maddened by the sufferings of generations, was 
on the brink of that great social cataclysm which History 
calls the French Revolution. Wrath at the spectacle of 
vice flaunting hideously in "high places," weary of sham 
glory and the masquerade of religion, sick of the worship 
of wealth and the tyranny of a profligate aristocracy the 
great nation was preparing to shake off its fetters. Ar 
might have been expected, a terrible reaction ensued. 
Disgusted with the crimes of priestcraft, it spurned the 
restraints of religion ; wounded to the quick by the 
shameless despotism of the throne, it plunged into the 
wildest democracy. Yet in the midst of its unrest and 
anger and contemptuous rejection of all it had hitherto 
obeyed and loved and reverenced, France longed for 
some sublime ideal — it cared not what, and, in truth, it 
knew not what it wanted, so long as it loosed itself from 
the old superstitions, the old beliefs, and the hypocrisy 
and corruption that had thriven around them. So it 
listened, perplexed and half-beguiled, while philosophers 
descanted on the glorious example of the ancient stoicism; 
while politicians preached the natural equality of man, 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 309 



social regeneration, and universal brotherhood, and pro- 
fessed to see the coming of — 

" The dawn of mind, which, upwards on a pinion 
Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space, 
And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace." * 

Alas ! the dawn which reddened the distant skies and 
misled their vision was but the primal glow of that 
awful conflagration which consumed so much that was 
good, true, beautiful, and holy, in common with so much 
that was false, mean, and iniquitous ! 

With the ardour of her girlish enthusiasm, Manon 
Philipon watched the gradual disruption of the " old 
order" and the building up of "the new." Her pure, 
austere soul shrank from the vice and vicious folly which 
surrounded her ; the remembrance of the lofty patriotism 
of Greece and Rome kindled her fervid imagination ; she 
longed for her country to shake off the incubus which 
oppressed it. When her parents took her to Versailles, 
the sham pageantries and fulsome adulation of the court 
disgusted her ; she dreamt of Athens, and of the sim- 
plicity that prevailed in the golden age of Solon and 
Pericles. Like too many other dreamers, she forgot, 
however, the facts that militated against her dreams. 
She thought of Aristides, to forget that his countrymen 
ostracised him ; of Socrates, to forget the trial and the 
prison and the cup of hemlock. Burning with a love of 
truth, and animated by a high sense of duty, she rebelled 

* Shelley: The Revolt of Islam. 



3io CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



against the social conventionalities that enthralled her. 
" O Liberty ! " she cried, " idol of earnest souls, thou 
art but a name for me ! " . 

Manon Philipon was now seventeen, and she was 
beautiful. " Reader," exclaims Thomas Carlyle, " mark 
that queen-like burgher-woman : beautiful, Amazonian, 
graceful to the eye, more so to the mind. Unconscious 
of her worth (as all worth is), of her greatness, of her 
crystal clearness, genuine, the creation of sincerity and 
nature, in an age of artificiality, pollution, and cant ; 
there in her still completeness, in her still invincibility, 
she, if thou knew it, is the noblest of all living French- 
women ! " Her face was rather round, the nostrils 
thick, the mouth large, but the brow was broad and high 
and open ; the hair fell on each side of the well-shaped 
head in dark-brown, shining tresses ; the eyebrows, full 
and dark, were arched over deep blue eyes of that 
peculiar hue which, in some lights, changes to brown ; 
the smile was radiantly sweet, the glance lofty and com- 
manding, the whole expression that of a strong and 
serene intellect. In stature she rose much above the 
ordinary height of woman, and her figure, though slender, 
was well proportioned and even majestic. She looked, 
she moved — a queen ; and as Virgil's Juno by her gait 
revealed herself the goddess, so Manon Philipon by her 
mien and bearing declared herself a great and heroic 
woman. 

But here the curtain drops on Manon's girlhood, the 
first act in the tragic drama of her life. If it had been 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 311 

part of my province to have followed her further, I 
could have shown the reader how nobly her womanhood 
harmonised with the promises of her youthful years. As 
a wife and a mother, as the head of a household, as the 
good genius of the community among whom she lived, 
Madame Roland was all that one would have expected 
Manon Philipon to have become — high-souled, generous, 
ardent, with lofty motive and resolute purpose. When 
the time came for her to quit her domestic retirement 
and assume the anxieties and obligations of public life, 
she was still the same. Heart and soul and brain she 
devoted to a cause which she felt to be sublime, — a 
cause which commanded her keenest sympathies. After 
her husband had accepted office, and was known as one 
of the leaders of the Girondists,* she retained her noble 
simplicity. " She now moves," says Carlyle, " from her 
upper floor on the Rue Saint Jacques to the sumptuous 
saloons once occupied by Madame Necker. Nay, still 
earlier, it was Calonne that did all this gilding ; it was 
he who ground these lustres, Venetian mirrors, who 
polished this inlaying, this veneering, and or-moulu. The 
fair Roland, equal to either fortune, has her public 
dinner on Fridays, the Ministers all there in a body : 
she withdraws to her desk [the cloth once removed], 
and seems busy writing ; nevertheless loses no word ; if, 
for example, Deputy Brissot and Minister Claviere get 
too hot in argument, she, not without timidity, yet with 

* These, the " Moderates " of the French Revolution, were so 
named because their chief, Vergniaud, was a native of the Gironde. 



312 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

a cunning gracefulness, will interpose. Enemies now 
insinuate that the wife Roland is Minister, and not the 
husband : it is happily the worst they have to charge her 
with. Serene and queenly is she here, as of old in her 
own hired garret of the Ursulines' convent ! She who has 
quietly shelled French beans for her dinner, being led to 
that, as a young maiden, by quiet insight and compu- 
tation, and knowing what that was, and what she was ; 
such a one will also look quietly on or-moulu and 
veneering, not ignorant of these either." 

The hopes of the friends of constitutional monarchy 
were ultimately overthrown ; the extreme faction 
triumphed; Louis XVI. perished on the scaffold, Danton, 
Robespierre, and Marat rose into power, and the Giron- 
dists were doomed. On the 31st of May, 1793, they 
were suddenly arrested, with the exception of Roland, 
who effected his escape ; but his wife was consigned to 
a dungeon of the Abbaye. During her captivity she 
exhibited the calmness of a brave spirit, conscious of its 
innocence, and too proud to indulge in useless com- 
plaints. From the Abbaye she was removed to Sainte 
Pelagie ; and thence, on the day that her friends and 
fellow-labourers, the leaders of the Gironde, were hurried 
to the scaffold, she was carried to the Conciergerie, 
where she was treated with shameful inhumanity. Her 
dungeon was damp and dark ; she had no bed, until a 
prisoner gave her up his own ; and, though the weather 
was cold, no coverings were allowed her. 

Though standing on the threshold of a terrible death, 



MANON, MADAME ROLAND. 313 

her courageous spirit never faltered. She read and 
meditated, as in her early years; she composed her 
" Memoires ; " and her heart returned to that consoling 
gospel of Christianity which had been the light of her 
girlhood. In her prison she was frequently visited by 
the philosopher Riouffe ; to whose eyes — eyes not to be 
dazzled or deceived by anything unreal or artificial — she 
appeared truly heroic. "Something more," he says, 
" than is usually found in the looks of woman shone in 
those large dark eyes of hers, full of expression and sweet- 
ness. She spoke to me often at the grating [which 
divided the women's portion of the prison from that 
allotted to the men], and we listened attentively, in a 
kind of admiration and astonishment. Her discourse 
was dignified but animated ; frank and courageous as 
that of a great man. She expressed herself with a purity, 
with a harmony and prosody that made her language 
like music of which the ear could never hear enough. 
She never spoke of the Girondists who had perished but 
with respect ; yet, at the same time, without any effemi- 
nate pity. She even deplored that they had not adopted 
sufficiently vigorous measures. She generally designated 
them as ' our friends/" 

Before the revolutionary tribunal she preserved her 
intrepid composure. No crime was proved against her ; 
but political hate could be satisfied only with her blood. 
She was condemned — on the ground that she had con- 
cealed the hiding-place of an enemy of the republic, 
that is, had refused to betray the secret of her husband's 



3H CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

asylum — and was condemned to death. Execution 
followed quick upon the sentence. On the 8th of 
November, she was conveyed to the place of execution. 
In the same tumbril went another victim, a feeble old 
man named Lamarche. As they drew near the scaffold, 
he wept and moaned bitterly ; and she sought to cheer 
him with brave words of consolation. At the foot of the 
guillotine she sprang lightly from the cart, close beneath 
a huge clay statue of Liberty. Pausing a moment, she 
asked for pen and paper, " to write the strange thoughts 
that were rising in her," — strange thoughts of the past 
and future, of the life so nearly ended, of the life so soon 
to be begun. Her request was denied; and the execu- 
tioner dragged her by the arm towards the dread 
engine of death. " Stay ! " she said, — that capacity of 
self-sacrifice which had consecrated her whole career 
surviving even to the last moment, — " I would ask a 
favour, but not for myself : Spare yonder poor old man 
the pain of seeing me die." " It is contrary to my orders," 
answered Samson. "You cannot," she said, with a 
radiant smile, " refuse the last request of a lady ; : ' and 
the executioner complied. 

The time came for her to ascend the scaffold. She 
gazed for a moment on the great clay image of Freedom, 
and bowing gravely before it, let fall the well-known 
words, — "O Liberty, Liberty! what crimes are com 
mitted in thy name ! " Then she submitted herself to 
the executioner, and in a iew seconds her head rolled 
into the fatal basket. 



MADAME MIC HE LET. 315 

" Noble white vision," exclaims Carlyle, " with its high 
queenly face, its soft, proud eyes, long black hair flowing 
down to the girdle ; and as brave a heart as ever beat 
in woman's bosom ! Like a white Grecian statue, 
serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of 
things — long memorable. Honour to great Nature who, 
in Paris city, can make a Manon Philipon, and nourish 
her co clear perennial womanhood. Biography will long 
remember that trait of asking for a pen ' to write the 
strange thoughts that were rising in her.' It is as a little 
light-beam, shedding softness and a kind of sacredness 
over all that preceded : so in her, too, there was an Un- 
nameable ; she, too, was a daughter of the Infinite ; 
there were mysteries which philosophism had not dreamt 
of!" 

Such was the death of Jeanne Marie or Manon Roland ; 
a death not unworthy of her life, as her life was no un- 
fitting prelude to such a death. Glorious womanhood, 
which wore the red crown of martyrdom ; glorious girl- 
hood, which ripened into that glorious womanhood — with- 
out which that womanhood could never have been 1 

Madame Michelet. 
Madame Michelet, the wife of the eminent French 
historian and litterateur, herself a writer of much grace 
and delicacy, with a passionate love of nature and a 
vivid sympathy with the beautiful, has placed on record 
a delightful account of her child-life, which I shall here 
translate for the convenience of my readers. 



316 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

" Among my earliest recollections," she says, " dating, if 
memory do not deceive me, from the time when I was 
between four and five years old, is that of being seated 
beside a grave, industrious person, who seemed to be 
constantly watching me. Her beautiful but somewhat 
austere countenance impressed one chiefly by the 
remarkable expression of her sapphire blue eyes, so rare 
in Southern Europe. Their gaze was like that of one 
who in youth has surveyed wide plains, vast horizons, 
and great rivers. This lady was my mother, born in 
Louisiana, of English parentage. 

" My young life was occupied by constant labour, 
strangely unbroken considering my childish years. At 
six years of age I knitted my own stockings, — by-and- 
by my brothers' also, — walking up and down our shady 
garden-path. I did not care to go further; I was uneasy 
if, when I turned, I could not see the green blind at my 
mother's window. 

'• Our lowly house had an eastern aspect. At its north- 
east corner my mother sat at work, with her young folk 
round her ; my father's study was at the opposite end, 
towards the south. I began to pick up my alphabet 
with him, for I had double tasks. I studied my books 
in the intervals of sewing or knitting. My brothers ran 
away to play after lessons ; but I returned to my mother's 
work-room. I found much amusement in tracing on my 
slate the great bacs which are called 'jambages.' It 
seemed to me as if I drew something from within myself, 
which came to the pencil's point. When my bacs began 



MADAME MICHELE1. 317 

to look regular, I would pause to admire what I had 
done : then, if my dear papa would turn towards me and 
say, ' Very well, little princess,' I drew myself up with 
pride. 

" My fathers voice was sweet and penetrating. His 
dark complexion revealed his southern origin, which was 
visible also in the passionate fire of his eyes, — dark eyes, 
with long black lashes which softened their ardent glance. 
Notwithstanding their electric fire, they could express an 
infinite sweetness and tenderness. At sixty years of age, 
after a life marked by strange and even tragical incidents, 
his heart remained ever young and blithe, benevolent to 
all, and disposed, even too easily, to confide in human 
nature. 

" I had none of the enjoyments of town-bred children, 
and less still of that childish smartness which always 
secures maternal admiration for every word which falls 
from the idolised little lips. Mother Nature alone it was 
that welcomed me ; and yet my early days were far from 
sorrowful — all the countryside looked to my fond eyes so 
very fair. 

"Just beyond the farm lay the cornfields which belonged 
to us ; they were of no great extent, but to me they 
seemed boundless. When Marianne, our maid, proud of 
her master's possessions, would say, ' Look, made- 
moiselle, there and there and still further, all is yours,' 
I was really frightened, for I could see the waving grain, 
undulating like the ocean, and rolling away into the 
distance. I was better pleased to imagine that the world 



318 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

ended at our meadow. Sometimes my father went across 
the fields to see what the reapers were doing, and then I 
would hide my face in Marianne's apron, and cry, ' Not 
so far, not so far ! Papa will be lost ! ' 

" I was then five years old. That cry was the childish 
expression of a sentiment, the shadow of which gained on 
me year by year, — the fear that I might lose my father. 
I yearned to please, to be praised, and to be loved. I 
felt so drawn towards my mother that I sometimes 
sprang from my seat to kiss her ; but when I met her 
look, and saw her eyes, pale and clear as a crystal lake, 
I drew back, and sat down silently. Years have passed, 
and still I regret those joys of childhood which I never 
knew, — a mother's caresses. My education might have 
been so easy; my mother might so easily have under- 
stood my heart ! A kiss is sometimes full of eloquence, 
and in a daily embrace she would have guessed, perhaps, 
the thoughts I was too young to speak, and have learned 
how deeply I loved her. 

" No such freedom of affection was possible to us. The 
morning kiss and the familiar speech with one's parents, 
allowed in the north, are seldom suffered in the south of 
France. Authority overshadows the sweet household 
ties. My father, who was an easy man and loved to 
talk, might have set aside this austere rule; but my 
mother kept us at a distance. It made one watchful 
and reserved to see her going to and fro, always severe, 
silent, dignified. We felt we must be careful not to 
offend. 



MADAME MICHELET. 



319 



" My mother could spin like a fairy. All winter she sat 
at her wheel ; and perhaps her wandering thoughts were 
kept in order by the gentle monotonous music of its 
humming. My father, delighted with her beauty while 
she was thus engaged, secretly ordered a light, shapely 
spinning-wheel to be carved for her use ; and one 
morning she found it at the foot of her bed. Her cheek 
flushed with pleasure ; she hardly dared to touch it, it 
looked so frail. ' Do not fear,' said my father ; ' fragile 
as it looks, it can well stand use. It is made of box- 
wood from our own garden ; and it grew slowly, as all 
things do that last. Neither your little hand nor foot 
can injure it' My mother took her finest Flanders flax, 
of silvery tissues knotted with a cherry-coloured ribbon. 
The children made a circle round the wheel as it turned 
for the first time under my mother's hands. My father 
stood watching, between smiles and tears, how dextrously 
she handled the distaff. The thread was invisible, but 
the bobbin grew bigger. My mother would have been 
contented if the days had been prolonged to four and 
twenty hours, while she was sitting by her beautiful 
wheel. 

"When we rose in the morning, prayers were said. 
All the family knelt together, with my father standing, 
bareheaded, in the midst. After this, how delightful it 
was to run to the hill-top, to greet the first rays of the 
sun, and to hear the birdies singing their little songs in 
welcome of the daylight ! From the garden, the orchard, 
the oaks, and the open fields, rose their voices ; and yet 



320 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

in my heart I hid more songs than all the birds in the 
world would have known how to sing. I was not 
naturally melancholy. I had the instincts of the lark, 
and longed to be as happy. Since I had no wings to 
raise me aloft to the clouds, I would have liked to hide 
myself like him among the tall grain and the flax. 

" One of my keenest pleasures was to meet the strong 
south winds that came to us from the ocean. I loved to 
struggle with them. It was terrible, but sweet, to feel it 
tossing and twisting my curls, and flinging them back- 
ward. After these morning races on the hills, I went to 
visit the wild flowers, weeds which no one else cherished, 
but which I loved better than all other plants. Near 
the brink of little pools hollowed by the rain-storms on 
the threshold of the wood, sprang, flourished, and died, 
forests of dwarf perfections, — white, transparent stars, 
bells full of sweet fragrance. All were mysterious and 
fugitive, and therefore I prized and regretted them all 
the more. 

"Along with the lark's merry nature, I had also its 
timidity, the sensitiveness that induces him at times to 
hide between the furrows of the ploughed field. I was 
discouraged by a look, a word, a shadow. My smiles 
died away, and I shrunk into myself, afraid to move. 

" ' Why, after I was born, did my mother choose to have 
three boys instead of three girls ? ' This was a question 
I often put to myself, because boys often tear their 
blouses, which they do not know how to mend. If she 
had but thought how happy a sister — a dear little sister 



MADAME MIC HE LET. 321 



— would make me ! How I should have loved her — 
scolded her sometimes, but how often have kissed her I 
We should have played and worked together, in entire 
independence of all those gentlemen, our brothers. 

" My elder sister was too old for companionship ; cen- 
turies seemed to interpose between us. I had one friend, 
my cat, Zizi ; but she was a wild and restless creature, 
and not a companion, for she would scarcely rest in my 
arms a moment. She preferred the roof of the house to 
my lap. 

"As I grew older, I became more thoughtful, and would 
say to myself, ' How shall I get a companion ? And 
how do people make dolls ? ' To me, who had never 
seen a toy-shop, it did not seem that they could be 
purchased ready-made. With my chin supported on my 
hand, I sat and mused, wondering how I could create 
what I desired. My keen longing prevailed over my 
fears, and I resolved to work from my own inspiration. 

" What should be the material ? Not wood, because 
it was too hard ; nor clay, because it was so moist and 
cold. I took some soft, white linen and some clean 
bran ; and with these I made up the body. I was like 
the savages, who must have a god to worship. My idol 
must needs possess a head, with eyes to see and with 
ears to listen, and a bosom to enshrine its heart. All 
the rest was of less importance, and remained undefined. 

" Upon these principles I worked ; and I rounded my 
doll's head by tying it firmly. There was a clearly per- 
ceptible neck, though perhaps it was somewhat rigid, 

22 



322 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

and a well-developed chest; some loose, flowing robes 
rendered limbs unnecessary. The arms were rudimen- 
tary, wanting in grace, perhaps, but movable ; in fact, 
they moved of themselves. I was filled with admiration. 
Why might not the body move ? I had read how that 
the Creator had breathed into Adam and Eve the breath 
of life, and with all my heart and all my six years' 
strength, I breathed on the creature I had made. I 
looked — no, she stirred not ; but what mattered it ? I 
was her mother, and she loved me, and I wanted nothing 
more. The dangers that threatened our mutual affection 
served but to strengthen it. She tortured me with anxiety 
from the hour of her birth, for I knew not where or how 
to keep her in safety. Surrounded by mischievous lads, 
the sworn enemies of their sisters' dolls, I could find no 
refuge for mine but the dark corner of a shed where the 
carts and carriages were kept. If on any occasion I was 
punished, I knew no consolation to equal that of taking 
my child to bed with me. To warm her, I tucked her 
into my little bed, with the friendly pussy who was keep- 
ing it warm for me. At bedtime I laid her on my bosom, 
still heaving with sobs ; and she seemed to sigh respon- 
sively. If I missed her in the night, I woke immediately, 
and groped about for her in a panic of apprehension. 
Often I found her quite at the bottom of the bed. Then 
I brought her out, folded her in my arms, and fell asleep 
— happy. 

" In my extreme loneliness it pleased me to imagine 
that she had a living soul. Her grandparents were not 



MADAME MIC HE LET. 325 

aware of her existence. Would she have been so 
thoroughly my own if other people had known her ? I 
preferred to conceal her from everybody's eyes. 

"To complete my satisfaction one thing was wanting. 
My doll had a head, but no face. I desired to look into 
her eyes, to see a smile on her countenance resembling 
my own. Sunday was the great holiday when we all of 
us did as we liked. Drawing and painting were the 
favourite avocations. Around the fire, in winter time, 
the little ones drew soldiers, while my elder brother, who 
had the true artistic faculty, worked with the best colours, 
and painted dresses and costumes of various kinds. The 
rest of us looked on at his performances, dazzled by the 
marvels which he had at his finger-tips. 

" While everybody was thus busily engaged, my 
daughter, carefully concealed under my apron, arrived 
among her uncles. No one observed me, as I succeeded 
in possessing myself of a brush, with some colours. But 
I could do nothing well ; my hand trembled, and all my 
outlines were crooked. I made an heroic resolution ; I 
would ask my brother's assistance boldly. Strong, indeed, 
was the necessity which led me to brave the ridicule of so 
many imps. I stepped forward, and with a voice which 
I vainly endeavoured to steady, inquired, ' Would you 
be so kind as to make a face for my doll ? ' My brother 
evinced no surprise as he took the doll in his hands and 
very gravely examined it ; then, with great apparent ease, 
he selected a brush, and suddenly drew across her 
countenance two broad stripes of red and black, some- 



324 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

thing in the shape of a cross ; and, with a burst of 
laughter, handed back to me my poor little doll. The 
soft linen absorbed the colours, and they ran together 
in a great blot. It was very dreadful ! A great uproar 
ensued ; everybody rushed to see my wonderful achieve- 
ment ; until a cousin, who was spending Sunday with us, 
seized upon my treasure, and tossed it up to the ceiling. 
It fell flat upon the floor. I picked it up ; and if the 
bad boy had not taken flight, he would most probably 
have suffered from my resentment. 

" Sad days were in store for me and my child. We 
were watched in all our interviews; and she was fre- 
quently dragged from her hiding-places among the bushes 
and in the high grass. The whole household made war 
upon her; even Zizi, the cat, who shared her nightly 
couch. My brothers sometimes gave the doll to Zizi as 
a plaything ; and in my absence she did not hesitate to 
claw it, and roll it about on the gravelled garden-walks. 
When next I found it, alas ! it was a shapeless heap of 
dusty rags. With the constancy of a great affection, I 
again and again renewed and recreated the beloved being 
so unhappily predestined to destruction ; and each time 
I meditated how I might produce something more beau- 
tiful. These aspirations after perfection helped to calm 
my grief. I succeeded in making a more shapely figure, 
and in fashioning symmetrical legs; once, to my sur- 
prise, the rudiments of a foot appeared ! But the better 
my work, the bitterer the ridicule that greeted it, until 
at length I began to grow discouraged. There could be 



MADAME MICHELET. 325 

no doubt that my doll was in deadly danger. My 
brothers whispered together, and their sidelong glances 
boded no good. I felt that I was watched. In the 
hope of eluding their vigilance, I was constantly trans 
ferring my treasure from one hiding-place to another ; 
night after night it lay under the open sky. How coarse 
would have been the jeers, how loud would have been 
the laughter, had she been discovered. 

" To gain relief from my misery, I threw my child into 
a dark corner, and feigned to forget her. I plead guilty 
to a shocking resolution, for an evil temptation assailed 
me. But if self-love seemed on the point of triumphing 
over my affection for her, it was but a momentary flash 
— a troubled dream. Without that dear little creature, 
I should have had nothing to live for ; she had, indeed, 
become my second self. After prolonged searching, my 
tormentors found the unlucky doll. Its limbs were torn 
off without mercy; and the body, tossed up into an 
acacia-tree, was impaled on the thorns. It was far out 
of my reach ; so that there the victim hung, abandoned 
to the autumnal gales, the wintry tempests, the westerly 
rains, and the northern snows. I watched her faithfully, 
firmly believing that the time would come when she 
would revisit this earth. 

" In the spring the gardener came to prune the trees ; 
with tears in my eyes I said, 'Bring down my doll 
from those branches.' He could find nothing but a 
fragment, a shred of her poor little dress, torn and faded, 
— a spectacle which almost broke my heart. 



326 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

"All hope having fled, I grew more sensitive to the 
rough treatment of my brothers, and gradually fell into a 
condition of despondency. After my life with her whom 
I had lost ; after all my emotions and secret joys and 
fears, I felt to the full the desolation of my bereavement ; 
I longed for wings to fly away. When my sister ex- 
cluded me from her sports with her companions, I 
climbed into the swing, and said to the gardener, 
' Jean, swing me high — high — higher yet ; I want to fly 
away ! ' But I was soon frightened enough to beg for 
mercy. 

" Then I tried to lose myself. Behind the grove which 
shut in our horizon a long slope rolled away towards the 
deep hollow below. With infinite pains I overcame every 
obstacle, and succeeded in gaining the road. How far, 
far away from home I felt ! How violently throbbed my 
agitated heart ! Then I reflected on the sorrow my dis- 
appearance would cause to my dear father. Where 
should I sleep ? I should never dare to ask for shelter 
at a farm-house, much less to lie down among the 
bushes, where the screech-owls hooted and cried all 
night. Without further reflection, I turned my face 
homeward. 

"Animals are happier, I reflected, and I wished I could 
exchange places with little Lauret, the tawny ox, who 
toiled so patiently, and came and went all day long ; or 
with Grisette or Brunette, the pretty asses, who were my 
mother's pets. 

"After all, who would not like to be a flower? And 



MADAME MIC HE LET. 327 

yet a flower lives but a little while : it is cut down as 
soon as born. A tree lasts much longer. True; but 
how wearisome it must be to remain always in one and 
the same place ! To stand with one's feet buried in the 
ground ! — The thought was too dreadful, and worried 
me as I lay in bed, thinking and thinking. 

" I would have been a bird, however, if any good fairy 
would have taken pity on me, and realised my wish. 
Birds are so free and happy — they sing all the livelong 
day ! A bird — I would have come and flown about our 
woods, and perched on the roof of our house. I would 
have come to see my empty chair, my place at table, the 
sad looks of my mother ; then, at my father's usual hour 
for reading, alone, in the garden, I would have perched 
upon his shoulder, and he would have recognised me at 
once." 

But here I must end my transcript. The autobio- 
graphy is touching and interesting; but in pursuing it I feel 
some doubt whether Madame Michelet has not uncon- 
sciously infused into it something of the sentiment and 
sympathy of womanhood. Even there enough remains 
to show how faithfully the woman reflects the child; how 
naturally this strange, self-contained, thoughtful, and 
imaginative girl developed into the author of " Nature " 
and " The Bird." It was the atmosphere which sur- 
rounded her in early years that made her all she was, 
that inspired the peculiar sentimentality of her mature 
works, which are so picturesque and refined, but so 
French ! 



328 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Eugenie De Guerin. 

Never was a more refined and delicate soul lodged in 
human tenement than that of Eugenie de Guerin. 

She was born at Le Cayla, in Languedoc, in 1805 
She came of an ancient family, but one which had fallen 
upon evil days, and her childhood was spent in the 
midst of poverty and privation. When she was five years 
old there was born to her a brother, named Maurice, tc 
whom she devoted her heart, her soul, her life with a 
passionate tenderness, which has never been surpassed. 
In her Journal, written for Maurice, — " that exquisite 
record of her devotion which will keep their memories 
green in Christian literature," — occur many interesting 
reminiscences of the early days they spent together. 
Maurice was delicate from his birth; "his soul seemed 
often on his lips, ready to flee away; " but the most 
vigilant tenderness watched over him and around him 
through the trials of infancy. His baptism was cele- 
brated with a vast amount of pomp ; and Eugenie, who 
was then living at Gaillac with her aunts, was brought to 
Le Cayla to share in the festivities. Two years later she 
came home again to stay, bringing him her first gift, a 
little frock ; in this she attired him, and led him by the 
hand through the warren on the north side of the house, 
where he made his earliest essay at walking, and tottered 
a few steps alone. Eugenie's delight was unbounded. 
She hastened to announce to her mother the wonderful 
news : " Maurice, Maurice has walked alone ! " 



EUGENIE DE GUERTN. 329 

For a moment there came a change over her feelings. 
Of a quick and sensitive nature, she could not repress 
a pang of jealousy when she saw the beautiful boy over- 
whelmed with kisses and caresses, while she was com- 
paratively neglected. Soon, however, this unworthy 
sentiment passed from her unselfish and loving soul. 
With all the energy and force of her character she set 
nerself to love her little brother, whose delicate health 
won upon her pity, and whose charming qualities speedily 
commanded her affections. Their mother, whose health 
was fast failing, rejoiced, as she saw the shadow of death 
approaching, in the loving protection which Eugenie 
exercised over her sick lamb, and prayerfully anticipated 
the days when brother and sister should be helpful to 
each other with counsel and consolation, with the wisdom 
that springs from affection and sympathy. 

Eugenie's intelligence, says M. Trebutien, blossomed 
early, and the natural emotion of religion in her derived a 
vivid glow from her strong imagination. In her father's 
room hung a picture of " The Crucifixion," before which 
she was instructed to kneel when saying her morning and 
evening prayers. The pathetic countenance of the dying 
Saviour revealed to her the wonderful mystery of Divine 
love. She brought all her little gifts to Him, and was 
consoled in telling them. She asked His help in all her 
troubles, — once it was that He would cause some stains 
on a new frock to go away, to save her a scolding ; and 
as they faded, she took it tor a miracle, which made her 
love God, and think nothing impossible to prayer and 



330 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

her picture. From that time she brought her wishes 
and wants to the Cross as well as her woes, and asked 
for anything and everything she desired — even that her 
doll might have a soul ; perhaps it was the only time she 
obtained nothing. She realised the Divine omnipresence 
with the quaintest simplicity, and believed and taught 
Maurice and Marie to believe that an angel presided 
over their nursery-games, calling it the " Angel Joujou." 

This pretty fancy of an angel of children's games she 
afterwards put into pleasant rhymes : — 

" Spirits there are of night, 
Who guide the starry forms, 
Who speed the flying storms, 
Fire the volcanoes bright, 
\nd rule the wave, the air, 
Hollow the ocean bed. 
Whirl the globe, and have the dead, 
Gloomy deserts in their care : 
Who scatter the gold of the rivers and mines. 
Who plant the rose and the lily clear ! 
And oh, in their uncounted lines, 
An angel of sport, and joy, and cheer, 
An angel of the children, shines — 
God made that angel dear ! 

*' Fair among starry things 
Are his vermilion wings ; 
The sweet pet-wonder of the skies ' 
The darling jewel of Paradise ! 
They call him Joujou as he flies. 

'* A guardian angel has every child 
To point to Heaven the way ; 
That guardian's brother is Joujou mild. 
The angel of sport and play. 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 331 

He made the first doll, he makes the toys, 
Whatever they are, for girls and boys ; 
In the morning early you hear his voice ! 

" Sweetly he laughed when he first descended 
To Eden, to Eve in the mystic shade, 
And there with the little Abel played : 
And I think his work will not soon be ended, 
For he makes rosebuds red and small, 
He makes glittering necklaces, 
He makes humming-birds that fall 
Into the bells of flowers, like bees ; 
He will make you, if you call, 
Any wonder that you please ! " 

I have not space for the whole poem ; here are the 
concluding stanzas : — 

" He is with us, one and all, 
Holiday and festival ; 
He has a cup, a golden cup, 
Full of pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, 
Without bitter, without measure, 
We could never drink it up : 
Thanks to him, 'tis, it is said, 
That the very tears we shed 
Turn to honey, drop by drop ! 

" And this angel will be found 
By good children, passed away, 
When they tread the heavenly ground, 
With the Innocents at play, 
With their martyr palm-boughs playing, 
And their crowns, — their voices rise — 
' For our playground,' they are saying, 
' God has given us all the skies ! ' " 

Happy with an almost ideal happiness was the child- 
life at Le Cayla while Madame de Guerin lived ; nor 



332 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

was it the less radiant because the sunshine was some- 
times dashed with tears. We should not understand the 
true value of pleasure if it were not for the contrast 
afforded by pain. Eugenie was endowed with many rich 
gifts of mind and heart ; but they did not exempt her 
from learning to read, and she did not learn to read 
without an occasional bitter experience. To her help, 
however, came a cousin Victor, who had a natural faculty 
for teaching, and he made the road to knowledge very 
smooth and pleasant for the little girl. She began to 
look forward to her lessons with eagerness, when she 
found that at their close her teacher always told ner a 
marvellous story — a story full of that romance and poetry 
of the Unknown which childhood loves. 

In this true and loving cousin Victor she had found 
that rarest of treasures, the treasure of pure sympathy. 
She was fond of dreaming, and had a strong, enthusiastic 
love of the glory of God as revealed in Nature ; and it 
was not every one who could appreciate her original ways 
or enter into her poetic fancies and reveries. When she 
lived at Gaillac with her aunts, she would rise after she 
had been put to bed, open the little window at the foot 
of it, and lean out star gazing, at the imminent risk of 
falling on the pavement below. One unlucky night she 
was caught in flagrante delicto, and the window was 
nailed up, so that she could no longer see " the stars 
which are the poetry of Heaven." But abundant re- 
sources to occupy both heart and imagination were still 
left, however, in the daylight scenery of her romantic 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 333 

home. And further, at nine years old, she went on a 
visit to Montels, an old castle amongst the mountains, 
where her cousins lived ; — an old castle of the feudal 
times, partly in ruins, associated with love-stories and 
ghost-stories, and haunted by many an eerie legend. In 
one of the rooms hung the portraits of several generations 
of lords and ladies of the castle — the most distinguished 
a lady in a ball-dress splendidly gay, side by side with a 
Capuchin rapt in devout meditation over a skull. In 
this stately drawing-room Eugenie took much delight ; but 
a still greater delight was the freedom of the grand-court, 
and the vast, green gloom of the chestnut avenues on the 
mountain-side. 

This period of happiness at Le Cayla was rudely 
terminated a year or two later. Madame de Guerin 
had suffered greatly, but with Christian constancy, and a 
murmur never proceeded from her lips. They saw her 
always serene and gentle, with a smile upon her lips : 
and though warned of the calamity that was so swiftly 
approaching, they could not believe it. But one night 
she passed away quietly ; so quietly that Eugenie, who 
had fallen asleep at the foot of her bed, was not aware 
of it until her father, pale and in tears, awoke her, and 
led her from the chamber of death. She was then thir- 
teen ; an age when children can think and feel, and 
receive impressions which become permanent. Her 
grief was intense, and it took the bent of excessive 
devotion. At this juncture, she fell in with " The Lives 
of the Saints ; " and her emulation was excited by the 



334 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 



story of their acts and sufferings. To divert her mind, 
she was sent away to her good aunts at Gaillac ; and 
there, one day, in an agony of sorrow, she rushed to the 
Church of St. Pierre, and throwing herself on her knees 
before an image of the Virgin, with wild and eager 
prayers implored the Blessed Mary in Heaven to receive 
her under her gentle protection. 

In later life, looking back at this period of trial, she 
felt how much she needed then the vigilant love and 
care of a mother. She did many things that a mother's 
calm judgment would have disallowed ; and though they 
were not of a kind to leave any stress or strain upon her 
conscience, they were not of any moral benefit. " For 
the honour of God," she says, " I would have cast myself 
into the fire ; " and she adds, " Truly, the Almighty does 
not desire that. He does not desire the injury one 
does to one's health by that mistaken, excited piety 
which, while destroying the body, leaves many faults in 
full vigour." And therefore she very wisely observes that 
" The Lives of the Saints " is a pernicious book for the 
young ; we may add, for others who are not young. 
" But it remained to the last," says Trebutien, " a 
favourite book with her, and occupied that place in her 
daily devotional reading which, had she been English 
and Protestant, would have been given to the study of 
the Holy Scriptures. She lived an almost perfect 
Christian ; but she would perhaps have been nearer 
attaining to that inward peace which passes under- 
standing, if she had oftener exchanged her volume of 



EUGENIE DE GUhRTN. 



335 



traditions and legends for the Divine truth of God's 
Word. 

At Madame de Guerin's death, Eugenie was thirteen 
years old, and Maurice nearly eight. There were four 
children in all, — Eugenie, the eldest, Marie, Erembert, 
and Maurice ; the youngest, Maurice, by his dying mother 
was solemnly placed in Eugenie's charge : she understood 
the trust, accepted it, and discharged it with infinite 
tenderness. But with the good mother all the sunshine 
had passed away from La Cayla, and the " cheek of 
home " was no longer lit up with happy smiles. A 
shadow of great gloom fell upon the children. " Their 
grandmother at Caberzen had lived through terrible days, 
and fireside stories prevailed amongst them of poverty 
and disaster hereditary in their family, and of most of 
their kindred dead in misfortune. Maurice, child as he 
was, felt all his life after haunted by presentiments of 
calamity. His sisters suffered less. They grew up at 
Le Cayla as in a convent ; far from the world, and in 
ignorance of nearly all that harms the soul and develops 
the seeds of evil. Eugenie was fond of birds, of flowers, 
of reading ; and when Eran brought home from college 
the "Funeral Sermons" of Bossuet, which he had received 
as a prize, she fell to devouring them with ardour, 
attracted by the beautiful thoughts of death and heaven, 
which found a sympathetic echo in her own emotions. 
Another book, whose influence on her tone of mind is per- 
ceptible throughout her journal, was "The Poetical Medi- 
tations" of Mons. de Lamartine, which she read at sixteen. 



336 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Maurice showed an early predilection for a clerical 
life, and his father encouraged it. He was placed under 
the instruction of the cure of the parish ; and every day 
his sister said a Pater that he might learn his lessons 
thoroughly, and not receive punishment. On Sundays 
he officiated in the choir at Andillac ; and when he 
swung the incense at mass, to Eugenie's fond eyes he 
looked like " a beautiful little angel." The boy would 
have grown up healthier, however, and with a stronger 
fibre both of body and mind, if he had had any com- 
panions of his own age, in whose out-of-door sports and 
physical exercises he could have shared. As it was, he 
turned his very play into work; improvising little sermons, 
which he delivered for the benefit of his sisters from 
a hollow under a wooded bank, called by them the 
Pulpit of St. Chrysostom. For a child of his excessive 
sensitiveness this was bad ; but it was worse when he 
accompanied his tutor, the cure, to the beds of the sick 
and dying poor, and from the spectacles of suffering and 
sorrow which they presented, acquired an unwholesome 
habit of melancholy reflection. It was fortunate that to 
some extent this precocious gloom of thought and feeling 
was counterbalanced by his passionate love of nature. 
From childhood he studied its mysteries, and listened to 
its minor voices. Under the shade of leafy boughs he 
spent long hours of happy dreaming ; the brook was his 
favourite companion, the songs of the birds his favourite 
music, and no book was so precious as that of the dark- 
blue heavens, inscribed with starry characters. The 



EUGENIE DE GUERTN. 337 



vague, dim thoughts which possessed him, he endeavoured 
to shape into verse; and these early poetic efforts 
Eugenie carefully treasured as the first-fruits of a genius 
which was one day to win immortal renown. In one of 
these he gave utterance to his regret on first leaving 
home. He hears many things of Toulouse, he says, but 
will that city give him anything so beautiful as Le Cayla ? 
And he bids Eugenie, in classic phrase, tune her lyre, 
and come and sing to him at school, as the free lark 
comes and sings to his mate in captivity. 

Yet he felt no real sadness at going to school ; on the 
contrary, he was excited by the prospect of new scenes, 
new faces, new pursuits; and he was animated by a 
boundless desire of knowledge. His sister's watchful 
love followed him to Toulouse; and then began that 
remarkable correspondence, with its revelation of the 
inner life of two pure and lofty spirits, which terminated 
only at Maurice's death. I suppose the following was 
the boy's first letter : — 

" Dear Eugenie, — I wish it were possible to have a 
sister at the Seminary. But do not be uneasy, I am 
very happy here. My masters love me, and my com- 
panions are excellent. With one, of whom I will tell 
you, I am particularly friendly. He begins to speak my 
language" (a language which he himself had invented), 
" and by this means we communicate with each other, 
and play at thought without any one suspecting. I am 
going full sail into the Latin country. You will have a 

23 



338 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

better master next holidays. Take care of my pigeons. 
I sing in the chapel. 

"Adieu. I kiss you, and beg you will kiss Pepone 
(my papa), and all the family. Tell them I am very 
glad to be here." 

It was on the eve of Twelfth Day, 1822, that Maurice 
arrived with his father at Toulouse. He was absent five 
years without returning to his birthplace; — five years 
which included the " flowering time " of his sister 
Eugenie's life, her blossoming into a loving and delicate 
maidenhood. Externally, with its faithful discharge of 
household duties, it was " a safe life," surrounded by the 
love of kinsfolk and friends, elevated by pure co-opera- 
tions, raised above all things by holy faith, but still at 
the heart of it restless. " The religious impulse," says 
Trebutien," that she had received at her mother's death 
had never relaxed ; but human nature was very strong in 
her, and kept up a perpetual struggle with her saintly 
aspirations. Rich in all powers of the mind, eminently 
poetic, equally endowed with imagination and good sense, 
with wit and reason, she was yet so penetrated with that 
sentiment of Catholicism which exalts renunciation above 
enjoyment, and proclaims all earthly objects unworthy 
the labour and sorrow of a soul destined to immortality ; 
thus her scruples of conscience made almost sins of her 
Divine gifts, and in repressing the instincts of her genius 
she found a perennial means of self-mortification. At 
intervals her force of character triumphed over this 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 339 

ascetic principle, and she had free and happy days when 
her beautiful thoughts flowed in beautiful words, as water 
flows from the mountain spring. She could write charm- 
ingly on a mere nothing — on the swallows flying past her 
window, on the old latch of a cottage door, on the new 
bell at Andillac, ringing the angelus for the first time ; 
and she had an exquisite delight in the indulgence. But 
this very delight it was that alarmed her (!) ; and her 
spiritual director made a merit of denying her literary 
taste, lest it should mislead her from the humility and 
seclusion proper to a woman. In other words, he sought 
to repress the precious gift which she had received from 
Heaven — to quench that intellectual light which was her 
very life ; and this, on the false plea that woman was 
intended to occupy some subordinate position in the 
world's economy. I think that there can be little doubt 
that Eugenie's genius would have been more vigorous 
and her imagination healthier had she been brought up 
in the freer air of the Reformed Church. The a)mos) 
morbid self-introspection encouraged by the Roman 
teaching, and the withdrawal from the activities and 
practical work of life enforced by spiritual directors, 
tended to foster the feebler elements of her character, 
while they exercised, I am persuaded, an unfavourable 
influence on her physical condition. It was fortunate 
for her that she found some degree of scope for her 
fertile mind in correspondence with her friends and her 
brother, and that she had a strong natural love of the 
country, which reconciled her to the monotony of life at 



340 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Le Cayla, "where they passed days without seeing any 
living thing but the sheep, without hearing any living 
thing but the birds." 

From her " Journal " I gather a few extracts which 
will illustrate her love of rural sights and sounds, and 
her pregnant faculty of observation S — 

" I delight in snow ; there is something heavenly 
about this white expanse. Mud, bare earth depresses 
and displeases me ; to-day I see nothing but the tracts 
on the road, and the footprints of little birds. However 
lightly they settle, they leave their small traces, which 
make all kinds of patterns in the snow. It is pretty to 
watch those tiny red feet, like coral pencils drawing 
themselves. Thus winter, too, has its charms and pretti- 
nesses. Everywhere God sheds grace and beauty. I 
must now go and see what there is of pleasant to be 
found by the kitchen fire, — sparks, at all events." 

" This day began radiantly : a summer sun, a soft air 
that invited one to take a walk. Everything urged me 
to do so ; but I took only two steps beyond the door, and 
stopped short at the sheep-stable to look at a white lamb 
that had just been born. I delight in seeing these tiny 
animals, which make us thank God for surrounding us 
with so many gentle creatures." 

" This month of March has some gleams of Spring, 
which are very sweet ; it is the first to see any flowers, — a 
few pimpernels that open a little to the sun, some violets 
in the woods under the dead leaves that screen them 
from the hoar frost. The little children amuse them- 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 34 i 



selves with these, and call them March flowers, — a very- 
appropriate name." 

" This morning I saw a beautiful sky, and the budding 
chesnut-tree, and heard little birds singing. I was 
listening to them beneath the great oak near Teoule, 
whose basin was being cleaned out. These pretty songs 
and this washing of the fountain suggested different trains 
of thought ; — the birds delighted me, and when I saw the 
escape of the muddy water so clear a short time before, 
I could not but regret that it had been troubled, and 
pictured to myself one's soul when something stirs it up ; 
for even the most beautiful loses its charm when you 
stir the bottom, there being a little mud at the bottom of 
every human soul." 

" On waking I heard the nightingale, but only a sigh, 
a mere hint of his voice. I listened a long while, and 
heard nothing more. The charming musician had only 
just arrived, and was merely announcing himself. It was 
like the first sweep of the bow of a great concert. Every- 
thing sings or is about to sing now." 

" Our sky to-day is pale and languishing, like a beau- 
tiful face after a fever. This languid state has many 
charms, and the blending of verdure and decay, of 
flowers that open above fallen flowers, of singing birds 
and little torrents flowing, this stormy aspect, and this 
look of May, make up altogether a something unformal, 
sad and smiling both, that I like." 

" The thousand voices of the wind that, like an organ, 
moans for the dead." 



342 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

" I was admiring just now a little landscape, presented 
by my room, as it was being illuminated with the rising 
sun. Never did I see a more beautiful effect of light on 
the paper, thrown through painted trees. It was dia- 
phanous, transparent. It was almost wasted on my eyes ; 
it ought to have been seen by a painter. And yet does 
not God make the beautiful for everybody ? All our 
birds were singing this morning while I was at my 
prayers. This accompaniment pleases me, though it 
distracts me a little. I stop to listen ; then I begin 
again, thinking that the birds and I am equally singing a 
hymn to God, and that perchance those little creatures 
sing better than I sing. But the charm of prayer, the 
charm of communion with God, that they cannot enjoy . 
one must have a soul to feel it. This happiness I have 
and the birds have not." 

" I have got some flowers in a glass ; and for a long 
time I kept looking at two, of which one bent down over 
the other, that opened its chalice underneath. It was 
sweet to contemplate them, and to represent to oneself 
the confidence of friendship typified in these tiny 
blossoms. They are stellarias, wee white flowers with 
long stalks, some of the most graceful which our meadows 
bear. One finds them along the hedges, amidst the 
grass. There are a good many in the road to the mill, 
sheltered by a bank which is all spangled with their little 
white faces. It is my favourite flower, and I have put 
several before the face of our Virgin." 

" Swallows, oh, swallows flying by — the first I have 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 343 

seen ! I am so fond of these lovers of the Spring, these 
birds that follow after the sweet sun, after songs and 
fragrance and greenness. I do not know what there is 
in their wings that pleases me so in watching them as 
they fly, — an amusement in which I could spend a long 
time. I think of the past, of the time when we used to 
pursue them into the hall, to lift a plank of the garret in 
order to see their nest, to touch their eggs, their young 
ones; — pleasant memories of childhood, with which every- 
thing here is fraught, if one comes to look at it." 

"We brought back white, violet, and blue flowers, 
which have made us a beautiful nosegay. . . . They are 
Ladies of eleveti o'clock ; probably they get their name 
from opening then, as other flowers do at different hours, 
— charming country time-pieces, floral clocks, marking 
such sweet hours. Who knows if the birds do not 
consult them, do not regulate their going to bed, their 
meals, their meetings, according to the opening and 
shutting of flowers ? Why not ? Everything harmonizes 
in Nature ; secret relations unite the eagle and the blade 
of grass ; and the angels and ourselves in the order of 
mind. I shall have a nest under my window ; a turtle- 
dove has just been cooing on the acacias, where there 
was a nest last year. Perhaps it is the same bird. The 
spot suited her, and, like a good mother, she once more 
trusts her cradle to it." 

"It is flowers that interest me, because they are so 
pretty on these green carpets. I should like to know 
their families, their tastes, what butterflies they love, 



344 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

what drops of dew they require, as well as their hidden 
virtues, that I might make use of them at need. Flowers 
are good for the sick. God fits His gifts for so many 
purposes. Everything is fraught with marvellous good- 
ness." 

" Nothing in the country is so charming as those fields 
of ripe corn, with their exquisite gilding. If the wind 
blow ever so gently, the ears, rippling one over the other, 
produce the effect of waves ; the great field to the north 
is a golden ocean." 

" I write with a cool hand, having just returned from 
washing my gown in the brook. It is pleasant to wash 
there, to watch the passing-by of fish, wavelets, blades of 
grass, leaves, scattered flowers ; to follow all that, and I 
know not what besides, down the current. So many 
things occur to the washerwoman who knows how to 
read the secrets of the brook. It is the bath of little 
birds, the mirror of Heaven, the image of life, a running 
road, the font of baptism ! " 

"It is to the sweet air of May, to the rising sun, 
to a radiant, balmy morning that my pen is speeding 
over the paper. It is good for it and me to disport in 
this enchanting nature, amongst flowers, birds, and 
verdure, under the wide blue sky. I love much this 
ever-graceful dome, and the little clouds of whitest fleece 
suspended here and there in its immensity, for the repose 
of the eye. Our soul shapes itself to what it sees ; 
changes with the horizon, and takes a form and colour 
from it; I can believe that men in narrow scenes might 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 345 

have narrow thoughts, smiling or sad, severe or gracious, 
according to the nature which surrounded them. Every 
plant gathers something from its position, every flower 
from the vase it hangs in, every man from the country in 
which he lives." 

" How pleasant it was this morning under the vine — 
that vine with the white grapes that you used to like so 
much. On finding myself there, on placing my foot 
where thine had trod, sadness filled my soul. I sat me 
down under the shade of a cherry-tree, and there, think- 
ing of the past, I wept. Everything was green, fresh, 
gilded with sunshine, exquisite to the sight. These 
approaches of Autumn are beautiful, the temperature is 
less excessive, the sky more clouded, hues of mourning 
are setting in. All this is so dear to me ; I feast my eye 
upon it ; I let it make its way into my heart, which turns 
everything to tears. Seen alone, it is so sad. Thou, 
thou seest Heaven ! Oh, I do not pity thee ! " 

" What a beautiful Autumn morning ! A transparent 
atmosphere, a radiantly calm sunrise, masses of clouds 
from north to south, clouds of such brilliancy, of a colour 
at once soft and vivid, — gilded fleece on a blue sky." 

" It was indeed a nightingale that I heard this morning" 
(in April). " It was about daybreak, and just as I woke, 
so that afterwards I thought I had been dreaming ; but I 
have just heard him again, — my minstrel has arrived. I 
note two things every year , the arrival of the nightingale 
and of the first flower, — these are epochs in the country 
and in my life. The beginning of Spring, which is so 



346 CHILD-LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

exquisitely beautiful, is thus chronicled, and the lateness 
or earliness of the season. My charming calendars do 
not mislead ; they correctly foretell fine days, the sun, 
the green leaves. When I hear the nightingale or see a 
swallow, I say to myself, ' The winter is over,' with 
inexpressible pleasure. For me it is a new birth out of 
cold, of fog, of a dull sky, out of a whole dead nature. 
Thought re-appears with all its flowers. Never was epic 
poem written in winter." 

" Poetry interrupted by thunder. What a noise, what 
explosions, what an accompaniment of rain, wind, light- 
nings, shaking, roaring, terrible voices of the storm ! 
And for all that the nightingale went on singing, sheltered 
under some leaf or other : one would have said that he 
laughed at the storm or competed with the thunder ; a 
clap and a burst of song made a charming contrast, to 
which I listened, leaning on my window-sill. I enjoyed 
this sweet song through all the awful uproar." 

" This morning paid a visit to the fields at sunrise. 
How charming it is to roam the country at that hour ! 
to find oneself at the waking of flowers, of birds, of a 
whole Spring morning ! And how easy then is prayer, 
how gently it rises through the balmy air at the sight of 
the gracious and magnificent works of God ! One is so 
happy to see the Spring again. God no doubt intended 
this to compensate for the loss of an earthly Paradise. 
Nothing gives me such an idea of Eden as this reviving, 
resplendent, waking Nature in all the beautiful freshness 
of May." 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 347 



" Amongst other fine effects of the wind in the 
country, none is finer than the sight of a field of wheat, 
agitated, undulating beneath those mighty blasts which 
sweep on, depressing and raising so swiftly ridges of ears 
of corn. The motion makes them look like great green 
balls rolling in millions one over the other, with a quiet 
infinite grace. I have spent half an hour in contemplat- 
ing them, and picturing to myself the sea, that green 
and tossing surface. Oh, how I should like really to see 
the sea, that great mirror of God, in which are reflected 
so many marvels ! " 

" If there be anything sweet, delicious, inexpressibly 
calm and beautiful, most certainly it is one of our fine 
nights, — this, for instance, that I have just been look- 
ing at out of my window; which is going on beneath 
the full moon, in the transparency of a balmy air, 
in which everything is defined as under a crystal 
globe." 

" Never did our out-of-doors seem so vast to me as it 
does now. I have just come in from a walk filled with 
solitude ; only a few birds in the air, a few hens on 
the grass. 

" How wide my desert is, and how immense my sky, 

Untired the eagle's wing would hardly sweep it round, 
A thousand cities, more, might stand within its bound, 

Yet my heart finds it small, and far beyond will fly ! 

Whither, oh whither flies it ? — Point the place — the road. 
It follows on the shining track made by the star ; 
It plunges into space where thought flies free and far, 

It goes where angels dwell, it rises up to God ! " 



348 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Writing to a friend, who has asked her what she loves, 
in reply she breaks out into song : — 

" When I was young, I loved, I loved the flower, the bird, the gem; 
And when the bright light ringlets hung waving from my brow 
I loved to see myself, and I loved to look at them, 
In the mirror of the stream down below. 

" Like a fawn I loved to wander, wander, wander where I could, 
From the meadow to the forest, from the hill down to the vale, 
To take back to its mother, from the tangled underwood, 
The little lamb that lay there making wail. 

" I loved the little glow-worms, they seemed to be for me, 
They seemed sparks for me to gather as they lay upon the grass ; 
I loved to see the stars, like shallops on the sea, 
In the heavens high above me slowly pass. 

" Oh, how I loved the rainbow, the beautiful, the bright, 
Stretching from the Pole to the high Pyrenees, 
And fairy tales and giant tales, oh ! they were my delight, 

And the prattle of young children prattling just as children 
please. 

" In every sound, and word, and song of innocence, was joy ; 
In every bird, in every cloud, in every odorous wind ; 
What was there that I did not love ? for Nature was my toy, 

I thought that God had spread the skies to please my 
baby mind. 

" Oh, I was happy as the bird, 

My joy was artless as his song ; 
And where I was my voice was heard, 
I sang my gladness all day long ! " 

These extracts not only demonstrate Eugenie de 
Gu&in's tender sympathy with Nature, and her love of 
sunrise and sunset, leafy woods, blue skies, and the song 
of birds, but also the all-pervading influence which Le 



RD 1 0. 8 



EUGENIE DE GUERlN. 349 



Cayla had upon her spiritual and intellectual nature. 
Its deficiencies — and deficiencies there were, pure as she 
was, and tender, with a strong, clear intelligence and a 
vivid imagination — were due to its monotony, in which 
her restless soul struggled vainly against itself, longing 
for a wider sphere, an ampler scope, a larger range of 
interests and duties. To this was owing her profound 
melancholy which haunts all her writings like the echo 
of some passionate cadence in a minor key. To this 
was also owing her constant weariness, her impatience, 
her disquietude, which it needed all her earnest religious 
faith to keep under and subdue. ''There are days " she 
writes, " when one's nature rolls itself up, and becomes 
a hedgehog. If I had you here at this moment, here 
close by me, how I should prick you ! — how sharp and 
hard ! " In these words we hear the cry of a dissatisfied 
soul. " Poor soul ! poor soul ! " she exclaims on another 
occasion, " what is the matter, what would you have ? 
Where is that which will do you good ? Everything is 
green, everything is in bloom, all the air has a breath of 
flowers. How beautiful it is ! well, I will go out. No, 
I should be alone, and all this beauty, when one is alone, 
is worth nothing. What shall I do then? Read, write, 
pray, take a basket of sand on my head like that hermit 
saint, and walk with it? Yes, work, work ! keep busy 
the body which does mischief to the soul ! I have been 
too little occupied to-day, and that is bad for one, and it 
gives a certain weariness {ennui) which I have in me 
time to ferment." Her safeguard against this restlessness 



350 CHILD- LIFE OF REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

was the habit of frequent prayer. Thus she writes : — 

" This morning I was suffering ; well, at present, I am 

calm, — a calmness which I owe to faith, simply to faith, 

to an act of faith. I can think of death and eternity 

without trouble, without alarm. Over a deep of sorrow 

floats a divine calm, a serenity which is the work of God 

alone. In vain have I tried other things in a time like 

this : nothing human comforts the soul, nothing human 

upholds it : — 

" ' A l'enfant il faut sa mere, 

A mon ame il faut mon Dieu.' " 

In spite of this source of strength and consolation the 
weariness re-appears, bringing with it hours of indescribable 
forlornness, and inducing her to cling with intense longing 
to her one great earthly happiness, her love for her brother. 
But we have accompanied Eugenie, that sweet and 
delicate soul, across the threshold of womanhood, and 
the plan of our little volume compels us here to part 
with her. The reader will find her life, as told by Miss 
Harriet Parr, and her Journal, as edited by M. Tr£butien, 
a delightful and wholesome study. "The Christian life," 
says Harriet Parr, " is the same in all Christian hearts, 
its practice of piety is the same in all Christian Churches, 
and whatever brings this assurance home to us should be 
dearly welcome. Eugenie de Guerin has shown how 
purely and freely a Catholic can live under a system that 
many of us regard as deadly to Christian morals ; and 
for the promotion of charity and unity, her Journal and 
letters are worth a library of theological controversy." 



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